


Quam olim da capo

by Drusilla_951



Series: The D. I.'s Daughter [3]
Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Endeavour Whump - Aftermath, Case Fic, Classical Music, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode Related, Episode: s03e01 Ride, Episode: s05e02 Cartouche, F/M, Family, Gen, Honeymoon, Marriage, Mentions of Endeavour Morse's Past, Musical Mystery, Musical References, Operas, References to Mozart, Romance, and murder, this is a story about love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-05
Updated: 2020-06-18
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:21:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 61,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23497447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Drusilla_951/pseuds/Drusilla_951
Summary: May 1968. When an unexpected visitor falls dead at Joan’s feet, and a priceless fragment of a lost eighteenth-century score is recovered, will Endeavour and Joan’s wedding plans be thwarted? An original case fic.Sequel toDal Segno al Codaand(Late) Summer of Love, but you don’t have to read them first! (Read the spoilers in the Author’s Note!)
Relationships: Dorothea Frazil & Endeavour Morse, Dorothea Frazil & Joan Thursday, Endeavour Morse & Fred Thursday, Endeavour Morse & Jim Strange, Endeavour Morse/Joan Thursday, Jim Strange & Joan Thursday, Joan Thursday & Win Thursday
Series: The D. I.'s Daughter [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1590691
Comments: 275
Kudos: 89





	1. Requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AstridContraMundum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstridContraMundum/gifts).



> **What happened previously in this AU series (Spoilers):** If you haven’t read the two previous instalments, you only need to know that Joan Thursday decided to stay in Oxford after the Wessex Bank heist, that she presently lives as a guest at Dorothea Frazil’s and that she (finally) accepted Morse’s proposal. (She had a temp’ job at _The Oxford Mail_ before becoming a trainee at Welfare.)  
>   
> All the standard **disclaimers** apply: _Endeavour_ doesn’t belong to me, and I’m just borrowing it for a while. Some dialogues are Russell Lewis’, and additional lines were ruthlessly pinched from _Inspector Morse_ episodes.  
>   
> All my gratitude to my **awesome Beta AstridContraMundum** , for her interest in this endeavour, her generous assistance, and her numerous comments which improved this fic a thousand times even when I was writing the first draft.  
>   
> The story hasn't been Brit-picked. Every remaining error is mine.  
>   
>  **Again, THANK YOU for all your comments and kudos to the previous instalment. I'm so very grateful for your kindness.**  
>  **Please, don't hesitate to leave comments on this one! First time I ever wrote a case fic, and I'm petrified!**

_Requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine_  
(Grant him eternal rest, O Lord.)  
( _Introit_ , Requiem Mass / Mass for the Dead)

  
  
‘ _Whiiish_ ’ goes the roller as it slides smoothly over the scraped and plastered wall of Morse’s den.

‘ _Screech_ ’ answers the needle on the opera record, as it ends its journey across the groves.

Perched on the top step of the stepladder, Joan Thursday sighs, then swipes her sweating brow with her forearm. Unbeknownst to her, her gesture imprints a pale green streak on her skin, but the colour misses her hair, protectively covered with a scarf.

She finishes the corner of the room with painstaking care, before stepping down on the canvas-covered parquet to admire her handiwork from afar. ‘ _Not bad, not bad at all_ ,’ Joan congratulates herself. At this distance, the faint tracing of the roller cannot be seen at all. It’s as seamless as it can be.

The colour isn’t that important, really, nor are the last brushstrokes, Joan knows, because every wall in the room will end up covered with shelves—and books and records stacked on them, sooner or later, hiding her handiwork. But at present, there is only this glorious spring-like greenness, mirroring the deeper green of the cherry tree standing in the back garden, whose low branches brush the windowpanes with muslin-like fingers.

Apart from the stepladder and the can of paint hanging from its top, the only piece of furniture in the room is a battered old stool. On it, Endeavour’s new record player sits in this barren paint-smelling splendour, the only permanent fixture of his den to be.

Static noise intrudes on Joan’s ears, and she hastens to stop the endlessly spinning record. Her deft fingers flip the LP to its other side, and put it back on, even if she has listened to this opera in a continuous loop all afternoon.

‘ _A few more days, and I’ll be able to sing along with them_ ,’ she considers with some irony, when the first _Finale_ of Mozart’s _Le Nozze di Figaro_ (The Marriage of Figaro) begins again, its bubbling energy invigorating and hope-inducing. There were few choices of records and Mozart was as good as any other, but this opera thing is slowly growing on her. ‘ _Not a bad thing, considering that_ —’

Joan turns the sound level up, opens the window wider to let in fresh air, then goes into the kitchen to make herself a cuppa. She’s earned it, and more than one. She’s been at it, painting like crazy since early afternoon, since she left Viv Wall’s office and went to Endeavour’s new place to speed up the renovation work. Now her shoulders twinge, and she feels that if she has to inhale some more ‘N°5 Paint (Chigton Green),’ she’ll go quietly out of her mind, sneezing.

As she reaches the kitchen, Joan looks without thinking out of the window, and there it is, in its conspicuous bright red splendour, her brand-new car, parked along the kerb.

Well, ‘brand new’ for her, that is, because she bought it cheap from Linda. The Mini has seen better days, and the hazard of its previous owner’s driving are still exhibited in the various bumps hidden by flower-shaped stickers, but it’s _hers_ now. And quite welcome it is, because Joan doesn’t know how she’ll manage to commute between Oxford and Chigton Green without a car, once she’s settled there as Mrs. Morse. The buses are reliable, but there are too few of them daily, and she’d hate to be tied to the place anyway, or too dependent on Morse.

Still, what his opinion will be regarding her Mini doesn’t bear thinking about.

Joan fills the kettle and places it on the gas cooker, shaking her head in disbelief. What possessed her to buy this wreck? ‘ _Its price, primarily_ ,’ says the practical part of her mind. But she already knows that Morse would prefer to walk back and forth to Oxford rather than be seen taking a ride in Joan’s car… Maybe they could manage to find another cheap one for his use?

Presently, he keeps the black Jag from the nick overnight so he can pick up her dad at home, as is his wont, but this state of affairs cannot last for long. Till now, Morse has managed to achieve his own ends because he sticks with his beloved Jag, that older model that some coppers don’t find very dashing to use… Still, it’s bound to be awkward in the end, his near appropriation of a police car.

Joan pours the water in the teapot, and a delightful scent of Earl Grey wafts in her nostrils. She inhales deeply, glad of the familiar, comforting fragrance. Anything to counteract the drifting whiffs of her afternoon feverish activity. With some luck, there might even be some biscuits left in the tin can she stored in the cupboard above the sink.

Deftly, she slips out of her overalls, unties the scarf around her head, and folds them on the back of the opposite kitchen chair, glad to be rid of this restriction. It’s not as if she has much choice to sit in the half-furnished house. It’s either here at the kitchen table or on the first floor, on Morse’s bed—‘Our _bed soon, quite soon_ ,’ she thinks with a happy twinge in the middle of her stomach.

While they are refreshing the house, and scraping and painting, all of Morse’s furniture is piled up in two of the smaller rooms upstairs and the living room downstairs, hidden behind protective sheets. They’re toiling hard to make the place liveable—at least part of it, because it’s bigger than her parent’s house, and really, Joan would have to produce children at an alarming rate if Endeavour really wants to fill up all the rooms upstairs… 

Thinking back on it, Joan smothers a giggle. _How he looked at her, when she said it, wonder and no little guardedness warring on his face…_

At present, there are merely a table and a few chairs, built-in cupboards and a gas cooker and stove available in the kitchen, and, in Morse’s bedroom, the double bed they bought at Burridge’s, mahogany night stands, a companion wardrobe in the same deep brown veneer, and even a chest of drawers in George III style.

All the rest of the furniture is ‘Victorian Ugly’—as Joan privately dubbed it—, not even ‘Gothic Revival,’ as Morse had to admit with a hint of disappointment. Not really what they wished for, but they used to be Morse’s great-aunt’s and beggars can’t pick and choose. ‘ _Oh, for a chrome steel armchair instead of all that upholstery!_ ’ was Joan’s inner reaction. However, Morse will be comfy in a Chesterfield armchair when listening to his records, after they drag them back into the den.

Now that the elderly woman has gone to a retirement home, she has bestowed the whole of her house’s contents to Morse; and it’s a godsend, as Joan wonders what they would have done with this huge house nearly empty, now that nearly all of Morse’s money goes to monthly payments for it and a few necessary repairs. Fortunately, he set aside some tin while he shared Jim Strange’s house for a few months. Not the best of cohabitation, even if all Endeavour ever said about it was ‘it isn’t the Yellow House,’ so Joan was left wondering which one of them would be impersonating Van Gogh. 

But it’s Aunt Matilda’s library that brought some enthusiasm to Morse’s scrutiny, as he perused her shelves.

Joan closes her eyes, and against the backdrop of her lids, Endeavour’s unguarded face expresses again his unabashed pleasure while he browses through a first edition of Sheridan’s _The Critic_ , one of the jewels of the collection. He seemed so pleased that Joan will _never_ dare tell him she has never heard of it; she just went along with it. It seems that Matilda’s forebears kept with the literary fads of their times, so there are some items that date back to her great-grandfather. Nothing of much value, only curios for bibliophiles and collectors of lesser writers, but interesting for Endeavour, nonetheless. At least, it makes up for the horridness of the sturdy furniture.

Morse’s books and most records are currently enclosed in crates, waiting for the greenness of the den to dry and the bookshelves to be erected along the walls. And this is why Joan is painting like crazy during a sunny spring afternoon, instead of strolling along the Cherwell, or window shopping, or doing anything that doesn’t include being enclosed sweating between four walls reeking of fresh paint.

In three days, they are supposed to put up the bloody shelves, and Jim Strange will even lend them a hand.

Within two months, Joan Thursday will sign ‘Joan Morse’ on a register, and she wonders what it will really feel like, tracing the unfamiliar name, even if she’s practised it on the sly several times on various notebooks.

She takes a sip of her tea pensively, while in the deserted den, Mozart’s music soars in syncopated outraged tones. Antonio the gardener is explaining to his master, Count Almaviva, that he saw Cherubino, an amorous little page much too interested in his Godmother’s beauty and kindness, jumping out of the window of the Countess’ bedroom. 

‘ _Ascoltate!_ (Listen to me!)  
_Dal balcone che guarda in giardino_ (From the balcony that looks out on the garden)  
_mille cose ogni dì gittar veggio,_ (I've seen a thousand things thrown down,)  
_e poc’anzi, può darsi di peggio,_ (but just now, what could be worse?)  
_vidi un uom, signor mio, gittar giù._ (I saw a man, my lord, thrown out!)’

In answer, the conspirators jump into the fray. The Countess, Susanna, her maidservant, and Figaro, the Count’s valet and Susanna’s betrothed, wanted to excite the Count’s jealousy on a red herring, then use his embarrassment regarding his mistake to get him to agree to Figaro’s and Susanna’s marriage. For this purpose, they hid the little page Cherubino, disguised as a woman, in the Countess’ chambers, intending him to lure the Count to a rendezvous.

Antonio: ‘ _A me parve il ragazzo..._ ’ (To me it looked like the boy.)

Count Almaviva: ‘ _Cherubino!_ ’

Susanna and the Countess: ‘ _Maledetto! Maledetto!_ ’ (Damn you!)

Figaro: ‘ _Esso appunto, / da Siviglia a cavallo qui giunto / da Siviglia ci forse sarà._ ’ (Of course, / from Seville where he went on horseback, / from Seville where he’s arrived presently.)

Antonio: ‘ _Questo no; che il cavallo / io non vidi saltare di là._ ’ (No, that's not so; / I saw no horse jumping out of the window.)

Count Almaviva: ‘ _Che pazienza! Finiam questo ballo!_ ’ (Patience! Let's wind up this nonsense!)

Susanna and the Countess: ‘ _Come mai, giusto ciel, finirà?_ ’ (How, in the name of Heaven, will it end?)

Joan already knows how it will end. In a whirlwind of mistaken identities and ruses, with the lovers reunited and married, and the Count begging his wife’s forgiveness for his roving eyes… All very satisfactory and theatre-like. Not that it is surprising: Morse explained to her that the libretto came from a famous French play.

Her mind wanders off to her own happy future. Half-formed images of married bliss unroll, snapshots of everyday occurrences turned sparkly because _he_ features in them, but they don’t linger for long. For all his dependability, her fiancé is in some ways unpredictable, so nothing is quite certain, and that’s fine. Joan would hate routine. Endeavour is out of the ordinary, and that’s also what drew her to him.

Alone in the soon-to-be-hers kitchen, she smiles suddenly with that private little smile that always made Sam think that she was planning some delightful mischief.

Remembering Endeavour’s eagerness as he drove her to visit the empty house brings back her own thrill when she first saw it. Brick walls, smoky blue slate slanted roofs and a small timber porch. The perfect English cottage, complete with back garden, boxwood hedges in the front, fruit trees and a few bunch of flowers gone wild at the back.

And former drugged squatters who so trashed and gutted the inside of the house that Endeavour was able to buy it for a mere £3,140. There’s nothing better than bad reputation and past purported murder to lower the price of real estate. It will take them years to pay for it, but at least, it will be _theirs_.

Joan drinks the last drops of her tea, and gets up. A half-painted wall is waiting for her.

As she raises her arms to tie the scarf round her head, preparing to battle to the end against her roller, the doorbell echoes with a tremolo in the mostly empty house.  


* * *

  
Hastily raking her hand through her hair just in case, Joan flings back the scarf on the kitchen table.

Hoping that it’s the long-awaited plumber, she opens the front door briskly, but the man standing on the threshold doesn’t look the part.

He’s a young man entirely unknown to Joan, about her age, she supposes. Red hair, fair skin, freckles, dark green jumper, and black-rimmed glasses, he looks like a half-asleep dumbfounded plump owl. And nothing in his hands resembles even remotely a toolkit. As a matter of fact, his hands are folded rather defensively in his pockets.

‘Hello,’ Joan says brightly. ‘I gather you’re not Mr. Crouch?’

Her welcoming smile isn’t mirrored in the stranger’s face. He refutes his presumed identity with a slight shake of the head, fidgets uncomfortably, and looks insistently above her shoulder.

Automatically, Joan sneaks a glance in the same direction, but she doesn’t see at thing apart from the brand-new cream-coloured paint in the entrance corridor walls, and the telephone set lying on the bare tiled floor, its extension cord coiled up near it for lack of a table to put it on.

‘And you are…?’ Joan probes hopefully.

At her inquiry, the man seems to gather himself together. ‘Is Mr. Morse at home?’ Again, he darts a look behind Joan, as if doing so would prompt Endeavour to materialise on the spot. ‘Err…this is Sergeant Morse’s house, isn’t it?’

‘It is,’ confirms Joan, ‘but he’s not home yet. What can I do for you?’

She must raise her voice to make it heard above the Almavivas household’s melodious disputes as they reach their climax. Joan winces internally. With the front door opened, the entire neighbourhood can partake of Mozart’s opera. Not a good way to endear the newlywed Morses to the inhabitants of Chigton Green.

The man’s attention changes its aim and focuses on Joan’s face, frowning. Her left hand goes nervously to her nose, and she asks, half-joking, ‘What is it? Dirt on my nose?’

‘No, green on your forehead, actually,’ the man smiles, all of a sudden. The mundane question seems to have restored his composure, as he asks with a voice betraying much less nervousness, ‘Who are you?’

‘Morse’s fiancée. He’s due here in a few hours. May I help you?’

The man shifts nervously from foot to foot, and takes his time before answering. ‘I—I don’t…’

He focuses on his shoes, his feet stirring faster with indecision until he glances up suddenly on Joan’s left hand, where her engagement ring twinkles red and white in the afternoon sun.

‘Fiancée?’ he asks.

‘Yeah, why?’

‘Well, I—’

In haste, as if the gesture preceded his thought, the man whips something out of his pocket and puts it forcefully in Joan’s hand. It’s so unexpected that whatever it is slips from her grasp as her hand closes upon it by reflex, and Joan has to flex her knees to recover it before it reaches the ground. She’s lowering her eyes towards the small square of paper slipped in her hand when a dull sound bursts out near her and the man standing a few feet in front of her. 

And another.

And a third one.

Her head snaps up in surprise, in time to see the young man sway sluggishly and crumble in a heap at her feet—well, rather where Joan’s feet would be if she hadn’t stepped back reflectively.

On the man’s upper back, there’s a tiny, dirty red stain which spreads rapidly, darkening his jumper.

Joan’s right hand searches a purchase, and in so doing, the bit of paper she’s still holding brushes against the wall. Absently, she slips it in the back pocket of her jeans. With erratic breathing and shaking legs, she backs away as fast as she can, her eyes focused on the prostrate body keeping the opened front door stuck against the wall.

She doesn’t go far back. Her heels bump into the telephone set and she halts, as if this frail obstacle was a barrage of unyielding proportions.

Sprawled in the entrance, the man doesn’t move at all, his left arm extended towards Joan as if asking for something, thus finishing the sentence she’ll never hear the end of, stubby fingers grotesquely fanned out on the black and white tiles.

Away in the street, on the outside world, a car engine starts abruptly and, lost in her trance, Joan dimly hears it speeding along the street then fading away into silence.

She releases a breath she’s not aware she’s holding, and as if they were waiting for just that, her legs give out unexpectedly. Therefore, it’s on all fours that she crawls towards the unmoving form and clutches the unresponsive drawn-out hand. It lays limp in hers, and she lets go of it as if it scorched her.  


* * *

  
It takes a few tries before Joan manages to dial the number, her back carefully turned against the ghastly sight.

‘ _Breathe_ ,’ she admonishes herself. ‘ _Breathe deeply_.’ But she forgets her self-possession as soon as a male voice intones into the receiver, ‘Cowley Police Station. How may—’

Words come pouring out pell-mell, unlinked with verbs or prepositions. From far away, she hears them gush out in waves, and checks herself, ashamed. _It’s not a police car they’re about to send, but an ambulance and a straightjacket her size, if she’s not careful._

She takes a shuddering breath and tries again. This time, some snippets of sense drift among the flotsam of her sentences. ‘Joan Thursday,’ ‘Sergeant Morse,’ ‘quick as possible,’ ‘emergency,’ ‘not moving,’ ‘where is my father?’ and ‘he’s dead.’

The man on the other side doesn’t hesitate. A few seconds later, Joan hears a click heralding the switching of the line, then Jim Strange’s comforting voice over the phone. ‘Strange here! What’s the matter, Joanie?’

Again, words fall upon each other when they speed out of her mouth. If Joan were to stop the outpouring to check them, she’d never be able to speak again. ‘He’s dead, Jim—someone shot him—in the entrance, and—I don’t even know who he is!’

Her tone of voice escalades higher in a panic-stricken coloratura, and Joan almost shrieks the last sentence, a tiny voice in her head _tsk-tsk_ ing with stern disapproval in the face of her mounting frenzy.

Fortunately, Jim has seen and heard too much to be ruffled by her disjointed sentences, and he asks purposely, ‘Are you alright?’

‘Do I sound alright?’ Joan almost screams. She heaves a deep, calming breath and asks, ‘Where’s Morse?’ Again, her question totters on the edge of hysteria.

‘Where are you?’ insists Strange, paying no heed to her last question.

‘Morse’s house, Woodstock Road.’

‘On our way. Fifteen minutes,’ he announces before hanging up.  


  


* * *

  
Strange is faithful to his word. A quarter of an hour later, Joan hears the screeches of cars stopping in front of the house. Jim must have broken every traffic regulation.

Still in a daze, she peers through the window of the kitchen, opens it and hurls to the approaching coppers walking through the front garden, ‘Over here!’ 

Still, her brisk closing of the window doesn’t entirely mute the incessant screeching echoing through her head.

Born of sideration, a part of her analyses dispassionately. But the noise goes on and on and on like a surreal imposition, putting a shifting screen of haze between reality and her senses, before Joan realises that the nerve-wracking sound is produced by the needle making its usual endless rounds at the end of the LP—bad pressing.

She should switch off the record player, Joan thinks with detachment.

Like an automaton, she opens the door of the kitchen and comes nose to nose with Jim Strange, as he stretches out his hand to grasp the handle.

He starts and says, ‘Joanie? Where are you going?’

‘Record player—in the den…’ she begins, but he takes her gently by the shoulder and turns her back into the kitchen.

‘We’ll take care of that,’ Strange says, then he raises his voice, ‘Shirl! Switch off the record player, will you?’

‘At once, sir,’ answers a female voice.

The sudden, deafening silence is a relief, but Joan realises that the static wasn’t so bad, after all. It drowned her thoughts in a comfortable quiver. Nearby, on the front doorway, people are talking in low tones, voices studiously avoiding a word louder than the other, so she cannot overhear what they’re saying.

Detachedly, she feels Strange’s hand on the crook of her back, then on her arm, pressing her into a chair. He’s talking to someone but she can’t really make their words out, until a sentence impresses her ears.

‘Tea, with a lot of sugar,’ Dr. DeBryn’s voice suggests.

‘Sugar?’ The word gets Joan’s attention, and she raises her head from the shield of her hands, noting his frown directed at her.

‘I’m not sure we—Morse has any left. I didn’t do any grocery shopping before coming,’ Joan says, then she asks hopefully, ‘Would scotch do instead of sugar? Getting mashed looks frightfully appealing for once.’

DeBryn huffs a small laugh while Jim simply seems scandalised. ‘That’s the spirit, young lady,’ the good Doctor approves, before withdrawing back into the corridor.

Joan hears him speak in low tones with the woman she overheard before, before a familiar-looking WPC enters the kitchen.

‘Miss Thursday,’ Shirley Trewlove says. ‘Do you want some tea?’

‘It doesn’t look as if I have a choice,’ Joan protests, but she accepts another cuppa laced with a drop of scotch when it’s ready. She keeps staring at it as if the china held all the answers to life, death, the universe, and the rest in between.

As she loses herself in that rigid contemplation, the WPC leans on the wall near the closed door, as if guarding it from Joan’s curiosity, tension emanating from her falsely relaxed silhouette.

But her vigil is uncalled for, Joan wants to tell her. She feels no urge to witness what her fevered mind imagines from too many whodunit readings. The pathologist moving the body around. Jim crouched near it probing for details in soft tones. The other coppers waiting a few feet behind, stretcher on the ready, leaving behind tiles relieved of this uncouth weight. A spatter of red adding a new irregular pattern to the repeated tracery of palmettes and fake Roman friezes, once the man—the body—is removed. ‘Will the blood ever come out?’ Joan wonders. ‘ _Will I ever stop to see his slack chin and glazed over, staring eyes as he fell?_ ’

‘We’ve met before, haven’t we?’ Joan begins wearily, when the silence between the women threatens to crack at the seams and morph into a more threatening shape.

‘Twice,’ the WPC answers curtly, her eyes staring at the cupboard directly in front of her. She seems awfully self-conscious, avoiding Joan’s eyes with obdurate care.

‘Yeah, I remember,’ Joan says, at a loss to continue the constrained conversation.

But she hasn’t time to rake her mind for long, as the voices she was straining to hear all along resonate in the entrance. The door to the kitchen bangs precipitously open, and a harried-looking Morse appears through the doorframe.

Joan jumps to her feet and meets him halfway. His arms are the shelter she sought all along; his warmth the comfort she needed against the horror of the last hour. She clings to him, her forehead seeking the crook of his shoulder, as if blindfolding her eyes against him would wean them from the sight she doesn’t want to see anymore. As she does so, he forgets his usual aloofness, and his instinctive response is to hold her closer still. Then his cheek brushes against her hair, as he looks down at his obstinate fiancée who doesn’t want to meet his gaze as she nestles into the deliberate caressing pressure of his body.

‘Are you hurt?’ Morse asks her.

‘Scotch’s really disgusting with Earl Grey,’ Joan mumbles against his chest.

She feels against her cheek the rumbling of his relieved huff of a laugh, and tightens the circle of her arms around his waist even more.

‘No sugar left,’ she adds by way of explanation.

‘None,’ he agrees, then shifts their position a little. Joan raises her eyes at last, and sees that Dr. DeBryn is standing silently in the doorway, flanked by a grim-looking Fred Thursday. She loosens her embrace and takes a tiny step backward as Morse’s face smooths into a more dispassionate expression.

‘Tomorrow, eight o’clock,’ DeBryn announces to no one in particular, but Strange nods as if that cryptic remark was crystal clear, his silhouette half-concealed behind her father’s. Morse merely seems peeved and his arm tenses for a second against her shoulder.

‘Alright, are you, Joan?’ her father merely asks, scrutinizing her from head to feet.

‘Yeah, yeah… Just—stunned,’ she owns and lets herself be hugged again. A brief hug which doesn’t threaten a DCI’s composure. 

Joan’s answer is the one they anticipated, as it breaks the spell. They all squeeze around the kitchen table, even the WPC, who takes a notepad out of her pocket and waits, pen on the ready, for the next necessary step.

Jim Strange asks her the questions Joan expects, and she ponders her answers slowly, not from a wish to withhold anything but from the fear of forgetting a detail. She’s resolute and patient as ‘Shirl’ scribbles down all that she says. Beside her, Joan feels her father’s presence, like a protective and silent shadow, and she’s glad of his restraint. She can do it on her own.

 _Unless she’s a suspect?_ The thought comes unbidden and disappears in a flash. _No, it’s ridiculous._

 _No, she never saw the man before. No, the bloke didn’t say what he wanted Morse for—if he wanted something from Morse, that is. He didn’t say much_ —and she repeats as faithfully as she can what he said to her. _No, she didn’t see anything suspicious. No, she didn’t touch the body—actually, she merely seized his hand to be sure—_

Joan clams up and lowers her head, and Strange tactfully desists when he sees a tell-tale shimmer in her eyes. Her head swims and abruptly, all she wants is to crawl into her bed and sleep for a fortnight.

Seated beside her, Morse doesn’t release her hand, and Joan feels Strange’s quick glances at their intertwined fingers, as he questions Endeavour in his turn.

He answers in clipped, quiet tones, and his litany is nearly the same as Joan’s. _Doesn’t know the bloke, didn’t have any appointment with him. Has no idea what it means, and does not take lightly his getting shot at while in his house. Has a perfect alibi, as he spent his day with Thursday interviewing suspects._

That last precision is flung voluntarily with a belligerent tone, one that draws Joan’s ears, acutely tuned to his every inflection. _Endeavour’s furious and he’s also wary._

‘Alright, matey,’ says Strange wryly, pocketing the notebook. ‘Don’t disturb anything. Front door’s off limits. So’s the entrance. Use the back door, will you?’

Thursday butts in. ‘Morse knows the music,’ he states in a tone that suffers no contradiction.

‘Right,’ agrees Strange. ‘Come by tomorrow to the nick to sign your statements.’

Morse nods briskly. ‘Won’t have to go far.’

Strange smiles apologetically at Joan, and with a last sweeping turn of the head, bids them good-bye. The WPC has already tactfully departed, as have all the coppers. 

Jim’s footsteps recede audibly into the house, and a last click from the backdoor heralds his departure. As if to make sure that that’s all for today, Morse goes silently to the window and watches the coppers as they cross the tiny gravel-covered front path, tugging at his ear pensively.

It’s just the three of them now. Family, or nearly so.

But it’s not before hearing the police cars’ engines break the silence for the last time that Joan pushes back from the table and slumps onto the back of her chair. His lips tightening, Thursday ventures, ‘Off to bed, young lady! We’ll drive you back to Miss Frazil’s.’

‘Thank you, no, I can drive myself now. I have my own car,’ Joan announces.

Morse raises an inquisitive eyebrow, and she explains, ‘Mini. Parked in front of the house.’

For a second, Morse’s mouth curls down deprecatingly, but he grits his teeth and says nothing, probably indulging the ‘poor little woman’ with another of his chivalrous notions. A quick flash of annoyance goes through Joan, but she’s too drained to really linger on it. Anyway, it’s _her_ car, so he can bloody well like it or lump it.

__Fred Thursday will take the Jag home. He will pick up Morse tomorrow morning, he explains, while sending a stern message to Morse with his eyes. From the look of it, Morse gets it, but at this point, Joan doesn’t care to decipher it: slumber is all that she desires._ _

__Dutifully, Joan raises her face and kisses her father good night as he bends over her. She’s got to get up. She’s got to go to her car, and she’s got to… But weariness pushes her back where she’s sitting, and she merely raises red-rimmed eyes towards him._ _

__As she shifts wearily, Joan feels a soft crunching sound coming from one of the back pockets of her jeans, and she cries out, her eyes widening in dismay, ‘Oh no! I totally forgot…’_ _

__Morse whirls around, and his agile brows jump up. ‘Forgot?’_ _

__Joan’s fingers slip into her pocket and come out proffering a small envelope, the kind used for enclosing visiting cards. ‘I forgot—He gave me that for you, just before—just before…’_ _

__Even the more observant censor would see that her face holds nothing more than contrition and a touch of anxiety._ _

__‘Dad, I really did forget,’ she pleads. ‘H-he pressed it into my hand, and I merely glanced at it, but he—he fell at that moment, and I forgot.’_ _

__Morse takes a handkerchief out of the breast pocket of his jacket and takes the envelope from her hand. Under Thursday’s intent gaze, he turns it around, disclosing his name written in block letters on the front. With as much care, he slips the flap free, frowns, bows above the table and carefully frees a scrap of paper._ _

__It floats onto the table, and glides on the middle of the Formica board, stopping in an equidistant distance between the three witnesses, but the scribbling on its sheet ends up directed at Morse, as if confirming that it was indeed addressed to him._ _

__Morse lets go of a gasp and blanches as he looks more closely upon the piece of paper._ _

__‘It can’t be,’ he says in a low tone, and he sits down rather precipitously in the nearest chair as if his legs could not hold him upright anymore._ _

__Joan and her father exchange baffled glances._ _

__The slip of paper that elicited such a reaction from Morse isn’t impressive, far from it._ _

__No more than an inch square, from what Joan can guess, the partially rotund sheet has that dirty beige tint that comes from being centuries old. On it, she discerns some scribbled words and, at the far left, the faintest suggestion of several horizontal strokes._ _

She knows a little about old manuscripts now, for Endeavour dragged her along to an exhibition at the Bodleian. If not for him, Joan wouldn’t have begun to fathom the fascination an original letter or an autograph score can hold. But Morse’s explanations and his enthusiasm changed her perception. She began to feel some awe over the relics of great minds of the past, as the usually imperturbable Morse looked with warm and admiring longing upon the display cases. As Endeavour bent over an Egyptian letter of a boy complaining that his father left him behind, she thought then that human feelings stay just the same, be they thousands of years old or from yesterday. And Joan admits that Jane Austen’s manuscript of _The Watsons_ was of primary interest to her, since she’s been reading Austen’s novels as part of her Free School program.

__So, Endeavour’s awe and reverence isn’t new to her, as he carefully places the manuscript squarely onto the slightly bigger envelope lying on the kitchen table, with suddenly shaking fingers._ _

__‘It _can’t_ be,’ he repeats, as if to convince himself that whatever this thing is, it can’t be genuine._ _

__‘What?’ asks Fred Thursday cautiously, looking alternatively from his flabbergasted bagman to his astonished daughter._ _

__‘It disappeared…’ Morse utters in a strangled voice, his face flaming and paling in seconds. ‘Someone tore it away in 1958.’ There is a tremor in his voice that Joan can’t brand properly. Is it astonishment or distress?_ _

__‘It was placed on display at the World's Fair in Brussels,’ Morse pursues, too intent on his explanation to take care of the scrutiny with which her father is observing him. ‘And, at some point, a… a—vandal (and at this point, his voice goes arctic with fury and damning heat) tore off the bottom right-hand corner of the folio, and took off with it… Probably an inside job.’_ _

__He raises his eyes from the scrap of paper, and Joan sees that outrage slowly recedes, leaving wonder in them. As if he couldn’t tear his eyes from the manuscript for long, he focuses them back on it, something akin to worship sparkling in them._ _

__Till then, she believed she was the only one who could provoke such a look in his eyes, she thinks with a wrench in her stomach._ _

‘If they’re right, it’s one of the last things he ever wrote,’ Morse adds, his finger hovering over the letters as he reads them aloud, ‘“ _Quam olim da Capo_.” Meaning that the “ _Quam olim_ ” fugue of the “ _Domine Jesu Christe_ ” has to be repeated “ _da capo_ ,” at the end of the “ _Hostias_ ”.’

Seeing Thursday’s puzzled look, he closes his lids as if cradling a painful secret behind them and, raising his sightless eyes to the ceiling, suddenly sings, ‘ _quam olim Abrahae promisisti… et semini ejus._ ’ 

__Joan recognizes the tune immediately, and from her father’s sharp intake of breath, so does he; but it’s up to her to say it aloud._ _

‘Mozart’s _Requiem_.’

__‘Yes,’ says Morse, and in his eyes lurks brittle triumph._ _

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Morse bought his house for £3.140**. The average price for a house in the early 1970s was £4.975, according to [this](https://www.sunlife.co.uk/blogs-and-features/the-price-of-a-home-in-britain-then-and-now/).  
>   
> The **‘ _Quam olim abrae_ ’ fugue** begins at 1:47 in this recording of Mozart’s _Requiem Mass in D Minor_ , ‘ _Domine, Jesu Christe_ ’, conducted by Sir Eliot Gardiner on [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xO3nT5cvaOo).  
>   
>  ** _So, what do you think of that first chapter? Please, don't hesitate to leave comments! First time I ever wrote an original case fic, and I'm petrified!_**


	2. Et lux perpetua luceat eis

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all your delightful comments! They brought me much joy!  
>  _As it's already Easter Sunday in my Time Zone, I'm posting this chapter now. I might not have the time to do so later today!_

_Et lux perpetua luceat eis_  
(And may everlasting light shine on them)  
( _Introit_ , Requiem Mass.)

  
  


_It can’t be._

Variations on this refutation engulf Morse’s inner ear, the major section suddenly veering into minor mode and emerging rather jauntily, with sloppy rhythmic and tonal bulge. That discordant theme echoes with an increasing certainty, blocking every other thought.

_How could it be? It must be a fake, it’s a fake._

He knows as he knows his own name that if it is indeed Mozart’s missing autograph, the repercussions will be tremendous.

And he’ll be taken off the case, that much is sure. _His name as the addressee. His house. His fiancée._

There’s no way Mr. Bright will let him—or Thursday, either—investigate the mystery. As the certainty invades him in a wave of blinding light, his shoulders tense and muscles tighten.

Morse raises his eyes from his obstinate focus on the slip of paper that _can’t be_ Mozart’s penultimate tracing on any score and meets Thursday’s watchful ones. _Has his thoughts travelled a parallel road?_

‘I have to be sure,’ he says half to himself, and leaping off his chair, he strides into the living room without any warning.

When father and daughter catch up with him, Morse is already moving crates around feverishly, muttering angrily when his hasty exploration doesn’t yield what he wants. After a while, Morse pulls a crate out from under others, and tears up the cardboard flaps in his haste to get to the contents. There are books inside—as in most of the other crates—and Morse inwardly curses his lack of care when labelling them. His hands plunge inside, piling up books haphazardly on the floor, until, finally, his quest is rewarded by a book whose cover sports a portrait of Mozart.

The illustration section includes a black and white photograph of the autograph score of Mozart’s _Requiem_ : the folio is featured in its undamaged glory, with an enlargement of the lower right staves on the opposite page, details which are of primary interest to Morse.

Leaving the mess behind, he goes back to the kitchen and places the photograph and the manuscript side by side.

The Thursdays peer at the conclusive evidence—if such a flimsy corroboration can be taken as evidence.

‘Could be it,’ Fred Thursday says after a moment.

The enlarged photograph shows five staves filled with notes—their flight like hasty flaps of wings—with words indicated underneath.

‘“ _fac eas, Domine, de morte transire ad vitam_ ”,’ Morse quotes, translating the Latin words immediately for the Thursdays’ benefit. ‘“Allow them, O Lord, to cross from death into (eternal) life.” Then the “ _Offertorium_ ” goes on with the “ _Quam olim_ ” fugue, “which once Thou didst promise to Abraham and his seed.”’ As Morse repeats the words, his mouth can’t help narrowing with a faint derisive curve.

He doesn’t really need to scrutinize the photograph to note that Mozart’s margin annotation is repeated twice. One in front of the alto stave, the other indication placed between the tenor and bass staves. Both presently torn out of the autograph score, with two distinct attempts, as if the perpetrator had hesitated between tearing up one or both. When the lower one proclaimed ‘ _quam olim d: C_ ,’ the upper one was more eloquent with ‘ _quam olim da capo_.’

‘Look,’ Morse says, turning the page of the book. Spread over opposite pages, there’s a colour photograph showing the last state of the autograph, bereft of Mozart’s alleged last penned words. It now shows two roundish tears, one of which even spills over the lines of a stave. 

The very same horizontal lines show up at the left border of the scrap of paper Morse peruses again fixedly.

‘Alright.’ Thursday’s voice shatters Morse’s bubble of fascination. ‘Morse, pack a suitcase. You’re coming with us.’

‘Huh?’ Morse replies absently, his mind blatantly focused on a decade-old heist and a centuries-long musicological mystery.

‘Pack a suitcase, you’re not staying the night here,’ Thursday repeats. ‘Joan, go up with him.’

His tone brooks no argument and none is offered. Morse’s head goes sharply up, and, as slow realisation fills his eyes, he nods, takes Joan’s hand, and propels her hastily before him as they go upstairs.

When they come back from their errand, Thursday has closed all the windows on the ground floor. Given at last all latitude to have its own way, fresh paint smell begins to invade slowly the neighbouring rooms, and Morse’s nose quivers with disgust as he closes and locks the backdoor on their exit.  


  


* * *

  


  
If Mrs. Thursday is startled to see her daughter and future son-in-law invite themselves for the night, she hides her surprise well and promptly gets busy to welcome them. 

‘ _The benefit of being a copper’s wife_ ,’ Morse thinks thankfully. ‘ _And of myriad emergencies along the years_.’

‘ _Will Joan take after her mother and deal as practically with all what life will throw at us?_ ’ he also wonders. Only time will tell.

Morse will bunk in Sam’s old room, no trouble at all, Thursday explains. Therefore, Morse climbs up the stairs and deposits his carry-all at the foot of the bed.

The bed is made up with fresh linen smelling of lavender, and suddenly, the fragrance takes Morse back to his childhood and that glorious treat of slipping inside newly cleaned sheets. Old memories like the smell of freshly cut grass and the first bite into a vanilla ice cream are feelings never gone far from adult minds, and they still carry with them safety and warmth. 

Now, if they could also help to soothe Joan…

When Morse goes back downstairs, his fiancée is already sitting on the couch, a cup of tea before her, her father filling his customary pipe in the opposite armchair, while Win Thursday is hastily putting together a late tea for her unexpected guests. The curtains are drawn up, with barely a slit to let in a world made more spectral with the sudden appearance of the celebrated ghost of an Austrian composer and the freshly-minted one of a young man resembling a panicked owl. In a corner, Win’s sewing machine is still buried under the yards of cloth deemed necessary to sew new curtains, their deep green indicative that they’re meant to be hung in Morse’s den.

‘I phoned Strange while you were upstairs,’ Thursday says. ‘Constable Wilkins will stay through the night before the house. Just in case.’

Joan’s head snaps up, a suddenly worried flicker in her eyes. ‘No, not because of you,’ Thursday hastens to say. ‘From the angle of the shot, there’s no way the killer could have seen you. Bloke jammed the doorway while standing. But if Morse’s right…’

‘Is Morse in any danger?’ Joan asks, her eyes widening, and deep down, somewhere, Morse notes that she’s more worried about him than about her own safety. Despite the grimness of the situation, it makes him glad, in a way. He’s selfish, he knows that, but having someone _care_ is somehow still new and unexpected. And relished.

Wordlessly, he takes her hand as he sits near her. Joan snuggles closer, looking up at him, a question in his eyes that he hastens to appease. ‘Even if the idea was to give _it_ to me, there is no certainty that I have it. It could still be in the man’s pocket, or at the Station, in an evidence bag.’

The mortuary would more accurate, but there’s no way he’s going to point _that_ out to Joan.

Joan doesn’t seem quite convinced. ‘So why…?’

‘—is Morse here? Better safe than sorry,’ interposes Fred Thursday.

Silently, Win Thursday carries a tray into the living room. Morse half rises, protesting, ‘Mrs. Th—Win, please don’t—,’ but she hushes him with a nod.

‘No bother, dear. It’s not much, pot-luck offering. Leak, bacon, and potato soup. Lemon cake, next.’

She gets busy handling out bowls, spoons and cloth napkins, then goes back to the kitchen, carrying back glasses, a pitcher of water and beer bottles.

For a while, the only noise heard in the room is the sound of soup spoons going back and forth between mouths and bowls. The hot food does a lot of good to Joan, bringing up a slight deepening of rosy colour on her cheeks, and the eerie look of wraith-like paleness finally ebbs from her face.

She gives a last lick on her spoon, her tongue carefully revolving around it, and, for once, the ages-old mischievous gesture doesn’t get her any reprimand. ‘Thanks, Mum, I needed that.’

Win looks at her critically. ‘Joan, are you eating enough? You’re too thin…’

‘Mummy! I’m alright, really.’

Despite her assertion, Joan twists her hands nervously, looking distractedly at the way her ring catches the light, anchoring herself in another tangible reminder of the man sitting close to her, whose body warmth helps dispel her fit of the dismals. It absorbs her for a while, while her parents and fiancé hold their breaths. When she returns their gazes, a forced smile—more painful to watch than a grimace—graces her mouth.

‘Really, I am. It’s—different from—’ Despite Joan’s inner resolution, her voice catches in her throat.

Indeed, it’s entirely different—and not quite—from Ronnie Gidderton’s death; and from Fred Thursday’s tightening of his jaws, it seems that he’s feeling the same powerless anger than Morse feels coursing through him, right now. But there’s nothing they can do to shield her from life. Joan will have to process it on her own, as she did before.

But now she has the sad benefit of experience, Morse thinks with bitterness, and there’s nothing he can really do to help her. Again, the sheer awfulness of his powerlessness comes creeping back. Even love is utterly ineffective. _He_ is worthless.

‘Hey,’ Joan says, her hand coming to rest lightly on his arm, shattering his misery with a mere touch. ‘Come back here! Don’t be a stranger!’

His eyes recover some light as he looks back at her. ‘Never,’ he replies, hastening to change the subject, so Joan doesn’t dwell on it more than necessary. ‘So, a falling out among thieves? What do you think of it, sir?’ His tone holds a perfect balance between keen interest and professional enquiry.

‘Could be. Or not,’ Thursday ponders, puffing on his pipe.

‘Why not?’ asks Joan, perking up.

‘You don’t imagine that I hobnob with those sorts of crooks?’ Morse butts in rhetorically.

‘If so, you’d be a single man in possession of a good fortune, and some lucky girl would have snatched you up before I did!’ retorts Joan, with a flash of her old spirit.

Morse’s mouth curls up. ‘Thus proving that unassailable truth!’ His head tilts as he wonders aloud, frowning quizzically, ‘Since when do you throw around Austen quotations?’

‘Since we got engaged! That’s when.’

But their banter falls short as Joan goes back to her current obsession. ‘He can’t be a crook. He seemed so… nice. Just kept looking over my shoulder as if you were going to appear on the spot… He didn’t look at all like a thief.’ Yet she immediately amends her statement, with a shrug. ‘Well, I’m not the best expert on robbers, anyway. Didn’t even see what Marlock was like…’

Before Joan sinks again in that well of self-incrimination, Morse deflects it again, probing at the puzzle lurking in the room like a whole symphonic orchestra squeezed in a bedsit. ‘Crook or not, why me?’

‘He wanted to give it back?’ asks Win hopefully.

‘Anonymous dispatching would have been best. And why in England, anyway?’ Thursday answers. ‘Besides, in all my years as a copper, never saw any attack of conscience worth millions.’

‘Millions?’ From the tone of his wife’s voice, it never really occurred to her.

‘Morse?’

‘You’re right, sir. It’s literally priceless.’ Morse utters a short, harsh sound that might, if it were less nervous, pass for a laugh. His hands flex as if they were remembering the smoothness of the autograph score under his fingertips, the contrast of the faded browned ink over the cream-coloured thick paper. ‘If it’s indeed genuine.’

‘That much?’

‘The last jotting down of one of the only incontrovertible geniuses of humanity? Probably. It could even be worth more than _Cardenio_ or _Inventio Fortunata_ , if they are ever recovered.’

‘ _Cardenio_?’

He’s lost Win, but Joan slips in quickly, ‘One of Shakespeare’s lost plays, Mum,’ and again Morse wonders about Joan’s newfound knowledge in literature. Surely, she didn’t seem so well-versed, a few months ago?

His glass of beer goes suddenly still in his long fingers. Morse casts a dark look inside it as if the remaining froth could suddenly yield the secrets of the immediate past, and begins in a low tone, his voice filled with the same reverence his mother used when telling him a bedtime story, ‘Apart from its intrinsic musical value, Mozart’s “Mass for the Dead” is filled with symbolism and mystery. Take the commission, for instance. Constanze Mozart, the composer’s widow, said afterwards that Mozart received it from a mysterious “Man in Grey” who did not reveal the commissioner's identity. While the commissioner was a Count Walsegg who wanted to commemorate the anniversary of his wife's death on the following February.’ 

Morse sees Win’s rapt face, and adds with a faint smile, ‘February 1792, that is.’

‘Anyway,’ he goes on, ‘Mozart may—or may not—have known his identity. He was a bit of a musical swindler, Walsegg, having the nasty habit to pass off others’ works for his own composing…’

‘And Mozart put up with it?’ Joan asks quietly, trying not to shatter the mood.

‘Did he have any choice?’ Morse says with some bitterness. ‘He badly needed the money. So, Mozart began to work on it, but, as chance would have it, he received operas commissions at the same time. He put the _Requiem_ on the back burner and went to Prague, then worked on _The Magic Flute_ in Vienna. Then he fell seriously ill…’

The last adverb echoes ominously in the cosy living room. Instinctively, Joan comes closer to Morse as he resumes his narration.

‘Mozart died on December 1791 after a short illness. At that point, Constanze Mozart was frantic. She was left alone with two young children and no money. She couldn’t give back the advance payment, so she had to find someone to complete the work, and make it seem as if Mozart had composed it.’

‘A touch of larceny, then,’ Win pips in.

‘You could say that,’ says Morse with a quick flash of a smile. ‘When Mozart died, only the first two movements were completed. As for the “ _Sequentia_ ” and “ _Offertorium_ ,” they existed merely in the briefest of outlines, with vocal parts and continuo—the bass line—but the “ _Lacrimosa_ ” segment breaks off after the first eight bars. In the autograph score, Mozart notated some details for the prominent orchestral parts, probably as memento; but on it, most were empty staves. In these, the orchestral parts had yet to be written and so had the inner harmonies. As for the rest, it was a blank.’

‘And?’ Joan asks, captivated by the story. ‘What did Constanze Mozart do?’

Morse’s hands dance through the air, punctuating his words, as if drawing through space and time the score forever consigned unheard in Mozart’s head.

‘Well, Mozart left some sketches. Scraps of papers with tentative themes, the beginning of an _Amen_ fugue, things like that. So, at least, there was something to lean on. Constanze Mozart moved heaven and earth to find someone who could complete the work. She first settled on a friend of Mozart, Joseph Eybler, but he merely worked on it for a bit before returning the score to her. A fellow called Franz Xaver Süssmayr was less shy and finished the completion, but as he tended to exaggerate his input over the years, no one really does know what Mozart really instructed him to do while on his deathbed, or if he used the little scraps of papers found on Mozart’s desk after his death… As most of them were thrown away, anyway, the mystery remains. Specialists are still biting their heads off around that one.’

There is a short pause, broken by Thursday’s carefully neutral remark. ‘You’re awfully fluent on the topic for a man who didn’t know what awaited him on his doorstep.’

Joan’s eyes throw reproachful fire at him, but Morse doesn’t really mind.

‘Just did my homework, sir,’ he says quietly. ‘We’re rehearsing it—the _Requiem_ —with TOSCA. Concert’s due next June. We had our first public rehearsal four days ago. A few academics from my old College even attended.’ His empty glass revolves between his fingers before he bends and deposits it on the coffee table in front of him.

‘The Oxford Scholars Choral Association. The choir that Morse sings with,’ Joan elaborates for the benefit of her mother. ‘I wanted to surprise you with tickets, but now…’

She shudders suddenly as if someone really was walking on her grave, and Morse puts an arm around her, enclosing her shoulders in a close, comforting grip. With a sigh, Joan turns around and hides her face against him. His embrace tightens, tethering her back to the world, until he feels her curving against him, relaxing in that already familiar way that feels so natural.

Morse darts a quick glance at her parents, but he sees only understanding in his future mother-in-law’s face, and in his Governor’s the stoic realisation that comes an age in any daughter’s life when her lover’s shoulder is first choice rather than her father’s.

The older couple exchange a glance, and Win gets up, muttering something about the late hour. Fred Thursday goes next. In passing, he briefly puts his hand over Morse’s shoulder in a blessing of sorts, and caresses as fleetingly his daughter’s hair. Her only answer is a soft sniff against Morse’s jacket.

‘Half an hour,’ Thursday’s gruff tone imports. ‘Then bed for you, Joan.’

But more than half an hour fly by before Joan and Endeavour go up the stairs in their turn.  


  


* * *

  
The latest developments don’t make Mr. Bright happy at all. As it happens, it would be closer to the truth to say that’s he’s downright furious. Tense back, clipped words and a slighter emphasis on the sibilants are but some of the outward exhibitions of his discontentment.

Morse stands before him as stiffly erect, as the dressing down drones on—but Reginald Bright would call it a ‘reprimand’—, a few words emerging sharply from that outpouring of irritability: ‘irresponsible behaviour’, ‘should have gone back with it to the Station immediately,’ ‘expected better from you,’ this one directed towards Thursday.

‘ _In for a penny, in for a pound_ ,’ Morse thinks, and he dives into the fray. ‘Miss Thursday forgot about it! In my book, that’s no crime!’

‘No,’ agrees Bright, ‘but an officer who keeps a piece of evidence overnight can be at least taxed for sloppy procedure. And given your situation…’

Morse’s brow furrows in bewilderment. ‘I wasn't aware I had one, sir.’

‘As an officer, you don’t. But as the long and distinguished history of Oxford City Police is about to be terminated…’

‘Sir?’ The word issues forth with less firmness than Morse would like. At his side, he feels Thursday snapping to tighter attention.

‘The official announcement will be done this afternoon. As for now, Division hasn’t issued any information about the extent of this…reorganisation.’ Bright focuses intently on Morse. ‘Two Detective Sergeants would, ordinarily, be surplus in a Station of this size. But they have other present concerns. Just don’t feed up their eventual prejudices.’

‘Prejudices, sir?’ Morse flings back, underlying Bright’s directness. From the corner of his eyes, he sees Thursday flinch at his flippant tone.

Bright’s face works over a sentence, finally left unsaid. What he does say, after a moment of deliberation, is, ‘You’re a good officer, Morse. I thought you’d be pleased to have some more time before you to think about your future.’

‘A reprieve’s not a pardon. As you know, I just bought a house. I just can’t wait months for the other shoe to drop. And…’

‘And he’s getting married in a few weeks,’ adds Thursday, when he sees the precision isn’t forthcoming. ‘To my daughter, sir.’

‘Good, good,’ nods Bright. ‘Marriage is a lovely time in the life of a young lady… but this takes us farther than I intended.’

He focuses back on the Mozartian scrap of paper and the envelope, now enclosed in an evidence bag and properly labelled. ‘No prints, except yours, Morse, that unfortunate young man’s and another’s. Miss Thursday, probably.’

‘She’s coming by the nick to have them taken, sir,’ says Thursday.

‘Good. Take that detail out of the way, then we’ll see what the door-to-door reports.’

Morse draws up a cautious breath, and ventures, ‘Sir, did you consider that it could be some sort of sophisticated hoax? An elaborate April’s Fool game?’

‘Like Gull’s, you mean?’

Morse scowls at the mention of the name, and Thursday frowns uneasily. ‘Gull’s secured in the loony bin, sir.’

‘I didn’t mean Gull,’ interferes Morse, ‘but… carrying such a—relic so casually? In one’s pocket?’ A contraction in his mouth expresses better than words what he thinks of such criminal carelessness. ‘Before alerting all and sundry, can’t we at least ascertain what it is we’re dealing with?’

‘Not you, Morse. Strange,’ Bright reminds him with as much delicacy as he can.

‘Oh! I know I can’t put my hands on the case, sir! But at least…’

_At least, let me know the Alpha and Omega of this bit of paper thrown so murderously in my way_ , Morse wants to plead.

But it’s not the flare of passionate entreaty surging in his eyes that moves his superior officer, it’s the sheer expediency of the case. Strange hasn’t—never had—the kind of touch needed to bridge easily between Town and Gown, and in this case, especially in this case, he wouldn’t know what questions to ask.

If no indisputable Mozart authority is immediately at hand in Oxford, Bright finds out, the next best thing—a great authority on Haydn’s life and works—should do the trick. ‘Joseph Haydn, the Austrian composer, Mozart’s inspiration and friend, the “Father of the Symphony.” He dominated German music and guided it from Baroque to Classicism, defining and shoring up the rules which would dominate European music for decades, especially instrumental music,’ Morse enlightens. At the very least, the don should impart an informed opinion on the eventual eighteenth-century authenticity of the tantalizing bit of score.

So, it’s settled. This morning—‘but only then,’ cautions Bright—, Morse and Thursday will partner Strange as he goes to Lonsdale to probe Dr. Emery on the genuineness of the manuscript. Morse provides the name, readily enough, but there’s a tell-tale twitch on his upper lip betraying his unease.

‘ _Does it come from the knowledge that he’s about to stride back into his old College, with new suspicions clinging to his now ambiguous reputation? Or is it something deeper than prickly pride or unsatisfied curiosity?_ ’ Bright wonders, as the two men leave his office.

Only time will tell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the **real story behind the stolen ‘ _Quam olim da capo_ ,’** see [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Requiem_\(Mozart\)) and especially the section ‘ _Autograph at the 1958 World's Fair_ ’. In our reality, only one ‘ _Quam olim da Capo_ ’ was torn off, not two!  
> Photographs of the missing piece can be seen [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mozart_K626_Arbeitspartitur_last_page.jpg) and [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Quam_olim_dc_in_Mozart%27s_hand.png).
> 
> Morse’s supposed lecture on **Haydn** was inspired by an online source… but I don’t remember exactly where I found it! Ouch. Well, at least, you know I didn’t write such a pompous sentence all by myself. You may find Haydn’s biography on [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Haydn).
> 
> _**So, what did you think of these developments?** _  
> I hope it wasn't too much of a Mozartian infodump! Sorry about that, but it was necessary as I don't know how familiar you are with the Requiem history... Hopefully, the characters' interactions made up for it.  
> This second chapter was shorter than the first one, but it's the shorter of the whole fic! Sorry. It will get better, I promise! Things will be speeding up, beginning next chapter.  
>  ** _As always, comments and kudos are gratefully accepted._**
> 
> **NEXT: In which our Hero takes a trip down Memory Lane.**


	3. Tantus labor non sit cassus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things are speeding up now, beginning with this chapter!  
> Again, thank you very much for your encouragements and comments! They brighten my day!

_Tantus labor non sit cassus_  
Let not such toil be in vain.  
( _Sequentia_ , Requiem Mass. Attributed to Thomas of Celano.)

  
  


Not so many years ago, during an entire fateful term, the dormer windows had felt like accusing eyes looking down at Morse, reproving his lack of constancy and the gradual drifting of his intellect upon the severance of his engagement to Susan. ‘ _A thing entirely pitiable_ ,’ remembered Dr. Lorimer.

Had he really been that frail vessel, rocked away by contrary winds, then shipwrecked on the reef of Disillusionment and its twin Charybdis, Despair? Disenchantment he had kept within himself, but since then, he had regained firm grasp of his brain and of his observational skills.

However, during that fine morning of a sunny day of May 1968, when Morse walks through the entrance Tower of Lonsdale College and emerges into the courtyard, he feels that old weight lifting from his shoulders. The windows are merely examples of fine architecture and a mere stratum of the mishmash of additions that make the two adjoining Quadrangles.

The Porter confirms that Dr. Emery is indeed in his rooms, expecting them, a faint frown delicately drawn over his plump face, and his figure exuding a disapproval spelling ‘wariness’ in all its nakedness.

Seeing Strange’s suspicious observation of the man’s attitude, Morse throws over his shoulder at his diffident colleague as they cross the yard, ‘Nothing to worry about. They don’t take kindly to interlopers, as I was so generously told, some years ago.’ In his tone, distinct sarcasm soaks the words with something weightier than memories, and Thursday looks at Strange as if daring him to question the words. Sagely, Strange chooses to let it pass, and follows Morse who leads the way with an ease born of old habit.

Knocking at the door abolishes years, and for a few seconds, the Endeavour-who-was hovers over the same threshold with the more seasoned Morse.

If he’s no longer the shy and hopeful young man fearful of being found wanting, the same wave of reluctant wonder engulfs Morse when he steps into the familiar room. Here, scores lined on the shelves whisper to other scores with the same humming undertone. Bars of music inspired by others, pieces mingling their soaring then going their different compositional ways, with embellishments speaking of Italian, German, or insular influences.

For all his reputed protectiveness of his beloved Haydn, Dr. Emery isn’t shy to promote him to all the College men who lend an ear to his enthusiasm. Morse remembers a few heated debates taking place between the don and a musically-minded selected few, between the mahogany desk covered with scores or various curios and the armchairs, as they discussed the latest broadcast from the BBC or the last unearthing of a rare opera by the Haydn Society—that it was founded by a Boston man, H. C. Robbins Landon, was an added injury to the touchy don, enraged to see an American take the lead on Haydn studies.

He’s always tried to keep up, Endeavour remembers as he stands shaking Dr. Emery’s hand. Searching desperately for an unpublished letter or a previously undiscovered source on Haydn’s English journeys, or even better, something about Haydn’s stay in Oxford that would place him, Dr. John Emery, in the Pantheon of major scholars and would enable him to attain professorship.

But for his momentary inclusion into that group, Morse was first and foremost an outsider. As always, hovering near the edge. For all his passion for opera, he was never behind with his Homer and refused stubbornly to veer his course towards Haydn. Now, he can admit it to himself. The fact that Haydn’s operas seemed to him stilted and awkward, far behind the passion and power of Mozart’s works, played a major part in his reluctance. And thus, he stuck to Greats and met Susan…

 _Would his future have been so different if he had yielded to the singing Syrens of the German composer?_ Now, he’ll never know.

In all the intervening years, Dr. Emery has barely aged, and years collide even more. Pronounced wrinkles at the corner of his eyes and of his mouth, a distinct Beethovenian furrowing when observing people through glasses obviously not up to date for their prescription; the main characteristics are still there, as are the shades of blue in the don’s clothing, one of his most cherished ostentations.

From the puzzled frown on Dr. Emery’s face during the introductions, it’s clear that he can’t quite place Morse. It’s only when the three coppers have sat down that his face clears. ‘Morse! Morse… Of course!’

And Endeavour realizes that he has unconsciously chosen to sit in his customary chair, a step farther than the others, leaving Strange—as the one in charge of the case—and Thursday, his Governor, in the front row.

‘—You should have stayed, you know,’ Emery says, as if picking up an interrupted conversation. ‘Henry pulled out in the end. No ear! Not like yours, anyway. You could have done great things. Been a fellow by now.’

‘I hardly think it still matters, sir,’ Morse replies in the same vein, much to the astonishment of Strange.

‘You sing with TOSCA, though, don’t you?’

At Morse’s look of surprise, Emery chuckles. ‘Oh, I didn’t hear you, lad. Trusler did. Came from the last rehearsal, saying that the _soprani_ screeched and that the bass soloist was off key. But he’s a critical chap, Trusler!’

‘Trusler?’

‘Helps me with my research, cross referencing a few things.’ Emery gestures towards the mess littering his large desk. Opened books are side by side with Xeroxes, a few antique printed scores and some modern copies. ‘I’m behind schedule, of course,’ he adds, as if it were a source of pride rather than embarrassment. 

Morse has a quick look at the desk and swallows a tiny smile.

‘Deadlines are bothersome, but I’ll manage…’ Emery declares in a tone that means ‘ _if you don’t hold on my time for much longer_.’

Thursday understands it as well as Morse. ‘In that case, sir, the sooner you have a look at what we brought, the better.’

Reminded of the aim of their visit, Strange opens the briefcase with the key Thursday hands over to him. Moreover, the handle is doubly secured to the Sergeant’s hand with a chain ending with a cuff tied on his wrist.

Seeing it, Emery’s breath hitches in his throat in an open show of excitement. ‘Gentlemen, this sounds quite mysterious.’

‘It is,’ says Morse. ‘We’re hoping you can shed some light on it.’

With careful hands, he picks up the evidence bag containing the scrap of handwritten score, and places it in front of Emery, on the only uncluttered place on his desk. The latter’s breathing becomes ragged, as he bends over the offering.

His first words are the same as Morse’s. ‘It can’t be!’

‘Can’t it?’ Morse asks, bent in a symmetric arch over the desk. ‘Can it really be _it_?’

Dr. Emery raises a face gone stark white. Patches of red surge on his cheeks, giving him a false air of a debonair drunk stepping down from a Hogarth painting. That flush gives the bulbous twisted nose, full lips and little close-set eyes an accentuated likeness with the antique miniature portrait he so proudly kept on his desk years ago. Morse can’t see it now, but it’s probably buried under the layers of papers littering the desk.

Dr. Emery’s finger can’t help it. It keeps tracing the outline of the torn slip of paper, the plastic bag a barrier to a more intimate contact.

‘ _Curious how we all yearn to feel its reality_ ,’ Morse reflects internally. ‘ _As if genius was contagious and that we could feel it by touch alone_ …’ An impracticable dream.

‘It could be it…’ Emery states finally. ‘But I can’t be more affirmative.’ His eyes search Thursday’s, acknowledging his seniority. ‘You understand that I can’t be more precise in those circumstances. Paper, ink, watermark… Everything counts. Taking that plastic bag off, for instance, would…’

With a firm shake of his head, Strange makes him understand that it’s out of the question, and the don goes back to his contemplation, angling the paper and letting the light play obliquely on it so he can see the intendments of pen strokes into the material. ‘It could well be,’ he repeats. ‘If it’s a fake, it’s a devilishly well done one. But how? Where does it come from?’

Again, the coppers make him understand that his question will remain without an answer. Deep disappointment flickers over the don’s face and he peers again at the relic, with a concentration which reminds Morse increasingly of cheap prints featuring Beethoven seized by Romantic inspiration.

Unexpectedly, Emery groans and his voice turns cantankerous. ‘Morse, how could you allow it? _Plastic_ , of all things!’ He springs from his seat, and begins frantically to search through a side cabinet.

Morse clenches his jaw. He’s well-aware of the issue but he had no say in the outcome. A glance at Strange makes obvious that the other Sergeant is blissfully unaware of the conservation problem.

‘There!’ Dr. Emery comes back, holding a medium size folder. ‘Take that!’

Strange puts out his hand automatically and finds himself gifted with a sheaf of blank paper. He raises puzzled eyes to the donor. 

‘Acid-free paper, man!’ the don says with an exasperated tone. ‘Wrap it around the score, at least!’

‘Thank you, sir,’ Morse says, in order to appease the irate musicologist who goes on, ‘Of course, the original score is held at the Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek—’

‘—The Austrian National Library in Vienna,’ Morse slips in helpfully.

‘—so the curators can authenticate it. If the tearing fits, well…’ 

Dr. Emery shrugs without ending his sentence. Of course, if it’s a perfect fit, all doubts will be swept away, even Strange can see that.

But Dr. Emery says it with a show of reluctance. If his assessment is wrong, and the authorities contact the Austrian Embassy and the Austrian National Library over a fake, the search for a scapegoat will begin. Saving face will make expedient to sacrifice him to the wolves… and he’s not keen to go down in Music History as the man who misidentified too hastily a missing treasure. His ambitions would never recover from it.

Whether it’s because his sitting there brings back memories or from some sense of remaining loyalty, Morse doesn’t quite know, but, still, he intervenes. ‘Would you recommend a second opinion, sir?’

The answering gleam in the older man’s eyes discloses that he took the cue as he should. ‘A second opinion, hmm?’ Dr. Emery pushes up his glasses up his nose. ‘There’s a man… Quite knowledgeable in all things Mozart, but not an academic. Indeed not. He’s a _collector_.’ And in the word passes a world of scorn and of envy.

Drawn back to the ‘ _Quam olim da capo_ ’ annotation, he considers it intently one last time, before resolutely handing it back to Strange. ‘Take it. At least, I consider myself privileged to have held it for a while… after a fashion.’

‘A collector, you said?’ asks Strange, who’s not about to let go of a possible expert, his hands busy with the reverse motion of securing the autograph in the briefcase, this time with the addition of a sheaf of acid-free paper for company.

Dr. Emery looks pensively at him, then resumes, ‘His name is Charles Incledon.’

Further clarification sounds like an entry in a biographical dictionary. All the essentials, but nothing that can help figure out what makes the man tick or his real personality. ‘American. Self-made man, like most of those tycoons, but dammit if I can tell you how he got so rich! Lately bought Mozart’s _Kyrie_ in C Major at Christie’s to the disappointment of the Mozarteum Foundation. He has a few other Mozart trinkets—as he calls them—including a lock of hair and Mozart’s snuffbox, in his collection.’

‘And where can we find him?’ queries Strange.

‘By Lake Silence. He bought that vulgar pile after that fraud Bixby died. Loved the ground and the neighbourhood, he said. Well, the mansion’s large enough to house his collections, anyway. He’s been upsetting the market with the flood of his offers.’

‘And does it upset you, sir?’ Morse wonders. _Surely, a modest don cannot compete with a millionaire?_

‘I must unhappily confess that I cannot acquire anything more sophisticatedly expensive than this kind of book.’ Emery gestures angrily to his desk where a battered leather-bound volume lies open. 

Morse gets closer and, under the watchful eye of its owner, straightens a volume of the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ bound in patched-up and scratched dark green leather. The purchase must be of sentimental value, he imagines, as the popular periodical should be held in any self-respecting College library.

His eyes skim the columns of the periodical at the opened pages, and he reads aloud without being conscious of doing so, ‘… _together with the several Doctors and Officers, all in their proper habits, (Dr. Ayrton and Dupuis wearing their Commemoration medals,) entered the Theatre, to celebrate Lord Crewe's Commemoration of Founders and Benefactors to the University. The honorary degree of Doctor in Civil Law was conferred on that venerable old man, in his 87th year, the Rev. Samuel Pegge, A. M. F. S. A. author of various publications in the line of English antiquities and the honorary degree of Doctor in Musick was also voluntarily and liberally conferred on Joseph Haydn, esq._ ’

A faint smile hovers on Morse’s mouth as his eyes browse the pages, and he stops reading aloud when he reaches the lines: ‘…“ _Mr. Richards, of Oriel, delivered his English poem on the newly-proposed subject of_ Arboriginal Britons… _traced the characteristicks of liberty in the savage state of this island and its extinction in the earliest stages of our Monarchy, the Poet greeted with joy its revival at the present period; of which…_ ’

‘Not quite prepossessing!’ Morse smirks, browsing through the cumbersome verses. Farther away, he hears the faint shuffle of Strange’s feet, but it doesn’t deter him from his reading. ‘Now for the really interesting part,’ he whispers, lost to his surroundings.

‘ _In the evening, the third and last Grand Musical Festival attracted a crowded and elegant audience to the Theatre. They were in excellent humour; and when Haydn appeared, and, grateful for the applause he received, seized hold of, and displayed, the gown he wore as a mark of the honour that had in the morning been conferred on him, the silent emphasis with which he thus expressed his feelings met with an unanimous and loud clapping…. and the several musicians, inspired with the encouragement they obtained, performed with double spirit. The act opened with the overture from Esther. Kelly then sung, “Why does the God of Israel sleep?” The duet_ … Hmmm… _A new concertante of Pleyel began the second act_ …—Hmm, now that’s better!— _Signora Storace and David were particularly successful; the first of whom gave “The Prince unable to conceal his pain,” with a passion and luxuriance of expression that provoked an enthusiastic exclamation of “Encore” at least from all the young gownsmen. Cramer followed with a concerto on the violin, with surprising ability… The whole concluded with the Coronation Anthem; and the Company, which amounted to about two Thousand_ —a very fashionable squeeze, obviously!— _and which (having been composed in a great measure of most elegantly dressed ladies) made a most splendid appearance, retired highly pleased with the attention and care shewn in the conduct of this business by Dr. Hayes, who, it is thought, has gained for himself about five hundred pounds_.’

Morse grins with a touch of irony. ‘An extravagant sum in those days! Genius hath its privilege!’

‘You still feel it, don’t you?’ Dr. Emery asks him, with a conspiratorial tone. ‘The pull of the past?’

‘At the risk of being proved wrong, sir, I was rather wondering what this review could inspire. Haydn receiving a Doctor of Music degree in Oxford is no fresh publishing material, isn’t it?’

‘No. If one rehashes the events of the concerts in themselves, indeed not… but if one found something which proved that—’ Emery suddenly bites his lips. ‘Now, lad, you’ll have me speak too much. You’ll have to wait, as all the others will, for my paper to be published.'

Again, his eyes drift back to his sources, and the men from Cowley Station hasten to take leave, expressing their regrets for keeping him away from his work.

‘What was all that about?’ Strange puzzles, as they retrace their steps between walls which had seen so many human emotions that they forgot the human faces and stored those pulses between their blocks.

‘Merely one of the finest hours of Oxford musical history. Joseph Haydn was the toast of London, and a huge Continental celebrity. The conferring of his Doctorate of Music in the Sheldonian was a turning point in his English visit, as he said in his own words, “ _I have much to thank this doctor's degree in England; indeed, I might say everything; as a result of it, I gained acquaintance of the first men in the land and had entrance into the greatest houses_.”’ Morse snorts. ‘He went back to Vienna a rich man and an even more celebrated one… When Napoleon later besieged the city, he even apologized to Haydn for alarming him, or so some biographers affirm.’

‘Nothing to do with _this_?’ Strange shakes his manacled wrist in emphasis. The briefcase swings gently in response.

‘None whatsoever,’ Morse replies, unlocking the Jag doors. ‘Ramblings of an obsessed scholar. At least, we know now the scales tip on the authenticity side.’

‘And we have to move fast,’ adds Thursday. ‘If any of this reaches the press before it does Division…’

‘Emery won’t talk. He’s too afraid to look the fool,’ advocates Morse.

But he slips into the driver’s seat with some alacrity. Strange choses the back seat, Thursday sitting protectively behind him. Lake Silence is their next stop, and Morse seizes the opportunity to lecture about Mozart’s _Requiem_ during the twelve miles separating them from their destination. 

Additional knowledge won’t hurt Strange any.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Their journey is a waste of time and something of a trip down Memory Lane for Morse. 

A bad trip.

It would seem that this case—this case he won’t be able to elucidate—piles up all sorts of remorse upon his soul. Bixby is but another one of those he couldn’t save.

Morse can’t help thinking of his intense and wistful smile when the Jag emerges smoothly from an alley of chestnut trees and turns around towards the mansion. His eyes are immediately caught by the flashy building emerging abruptly, tall and beige-coloured, slate-roofed and almost gleaming against an impossibly blue sky. How different from his first appraisal of the North façade, muted by night and overhung with twinkling stars, his slow approach through the front alley allowing a gradual dwarfing of the visitor by this skyline of turrets and extravagant weathervanes!

But the public approach from the avenue is made to astound, not to woo. Their gradual ascent on the slope through grounds hidden from the road by twin rows of chestnut trees doesn’t prepare the coppers for the sight of the manor. ‘ _Château_ ’ would have been a more precise wording, as the house had first been patterned from Renaissance castles built in the Valley of the Loire, until later additions by more eccentric owners had affixed a perfectly copied late-Gothic wing and eighteenth-century style stables to this out-of-time monstrosity. Still, it sits with disdainful pride on the hill, its South façade looking with satisfaction upon a Parterre where carmine flowers frame the Versailles-like fountain, its Tritons and marine horses shaking themselves with élan in the ever-flowing waters, troubled by more than the eyes can see. 

And down the slope, down, hidden from view, is the lake on whose shores Morse once heard a shot which smashed one of his possible futures. 

_What if he had accepted Bixby’s offer to be his private secretary? Would the tormented man still be alive? Would Morse have gained a true friend?_

The house _is_ monstrous, when one does reflect on it. There are few sites where nature has been counteracted with such a contrary sensitivity or less understanding of its essential harmony. Even the large twin staircase towers flanking the building have been graced with windowpanes, their garish colours catching the sun even from afar.

But in the intervening months, at least, natural growth has been given some leeway. The trees seem to stand taller, and a few signs show that the gardeners have gone missing, or else that the new American owner cares more about artefacts from the ancient past than about present greenery.

‘ _Are the flowerbeds in the French garden the same?_ ’ wonders Morse. Once, they impeccably echoed the brilliant shade of the red Porsche Bixby had so foolishly and generously offered him. A gift with strings attached, he later realised, but a gift nonetheless. 

_A gift to a man Bixby perceived as his mirror image. Someone whose soul was but a developer for the snapshots stolen from his past. A substitute for his evil twin brother. A positive twin he got to choose this time. Another outsider, one foot in the door, the other—_

‘Didn’t change much!’ Thursday mutters, shattering Morse’s thoughts as the police car reaches its destination, and he can’t help looking back at him, even as he stops the Jag before the imposing entrance.

Liveried servants hasten outside when they hear the car pull up and as the coppers descend onto the maniacally groomed gravel.

All illusion of permanence dispels when they enter the building.

Charles Incledon is nothing like Joss Bixby— _Charlie Greel_. While the former was slightly built, full of nervous energy and quick smiles, the American is a portly man, slow on his feet when he rises from behind his desk. Whereas Bixby’s face was classically fine-looking, a poster boy of Victorian handsomeness, a hooked nose lending a Roman Emperor likeness—one of the dissolute ones, amends Morse—gives authority to Incledon’s fleshy face. However, the slightly balding hair has vigour and a shine that speaks of relatively clean living.

The introductions go much the same as they went with Dr. Emery, but this time, the mahogany desk is twice as large and it’s immaculately clean. If not for the phonebook opened before Incledon, and the slightly unaligned phone, it would be easy to believe that it’s just for show.

Strange has gotten some more confidence in the proceedings, as he mirrors Thursday’s and Morse’s words to Dr. Emery. Soon, the polite police chitchat is out of the way and the score—still enclosed in the evidence bag—is placed on the leather covered desk.

The courteous sentence stating the American’s pleasure to be given the honour of his expertise is cut short with a slight gurgle as his head lowers over the document.

‘What’s the meaning of this?’ The tone is harsh, with an undercurrent of unease that draws Morse’s sharp interest. His colleagues’ also, as he senses more than sees Thursday’s rapt attention and Strange’s instinctive step forward.

‘Do you recognise it?’ Strange’s voice is noncommittal but holding an attention blatant to any interested listener.

‘Who wouldn’t? Mozart’s handwriting’s pretty unmistakeable.’

‘So, you do say it’s authentic?’

‘Darn it, man! I wouldn’t recognize it? Me? Whaddya take me for?’

With a brusque move, Incledon pushes his chair away from his desk, his jaw hardening under the flesh. ‘Ask any Salzburg curator if you don’t believe me!’ he adds, cursing under his breath.

‘That’s the next step,’ Morse replies curtly.

The little blue-grey eyes narrow with sudden suspicion, firing at him, ‘Where did you find it?’ 

For a second, Morse feels as if the question was specifically directed at him. But no, the American queries the very same thing with his eyes, as they fall on each of the three men in their turn.

‘Not your business, sir,’ Thursday says calmly.

‘Not my business? When the other missing piece could be… nearby?’ asks the collector with an unmistakable heat.

The idea doesn’t seem to have crossed Strange’s brain, and his denegation comes noticeably late. ‘It’s not.’

As if ascertaining the truth of the statement, Incledon looks at Strange with insistence, and the Sergeant ends up lowering his gaze. It doesn’t seem to make any lasting impression on him that the millionaire wouldn’t hesitate to be guilty of receiving in order to own a piece of the precious manuscript. But Morse sees a tightening of his lips that’d bode ill for the tycoon if he persisted in that line. Fortunately, he doesn’t.

Satisfied with this small victory, the American sits back in his chair and says almost benevolently, ‘So, what may I do for you, gentlemen?’

‘Give us your honest opinion about this…manuscript,’ says Morse.

‘You got it already. Probably is Mozart’s not-so-long-lost score.’ Then a notion crosses his mind and they can almost trace its journey between Incledon’s brain and his mouth as he adds, ‘Found no Oxford guy to tell you as much?’ There is an unholy glee in his tone, now.

‘A second opinion’s always best,’ temporises Strange.

‘Ha!’ he smirks. ‘Bet Old Crazy’s been playing sissy,’ Incledon goes on dismissively. ‘Got my name from him, didn’t you? Can’t even stick by his word to leave me alone.’

‘“Old Crazy”?’

‘Don’t you know? Emery’s grandpop was John Emery, the actor. First appeared on the stage at about the time Mozart died. Made himself a teeny-weeny rep’ in his times for some Shakespearian roles, Caliban, Tyke… Didn’t even come close to Kemble or Kean! Old Crazy was one of his first.’ A harsh bark of a laugh interrupts his inventory. ‘Nickname’s always drove Emery nuts when I used it.’ He chuckles reminiscently, then the ripples of his laugh alter, filled with a gleeful malice. ‘Not that he had any reasons to resent it!’

‘How so?’ probes Strange.

‘Oh, usually kicked up a fuss about the way academics treat his beloved Haydn. Said he didn’t get enough of recognition, that Mozart was vastly overrated. That without Haydn, he wouldn’t have reached those heights… That kind of crap.’

‘That’s not entirely false,’ Morse ventures. ‘Haydn’s glory shone brighter than Mozart’s in Europe for a long while.’

The American humphs in an unconvinced way. ‘Anyway, can’t stomach how we Americans dominate the field.’

The only reaction he gets is a polite attentiveness, so he comes back to the manuscript lying in front of him. ‘Most probably genuine. And then?’

‘Then it goes back to its proper place,’ says Strange in a firm tone.

‘Has to, I suppose.’ Incledon sighs regretfully. ‘I won’t deny that it would be a fine addition to my modest collection…’ His mouth twitches again, but he rallies fast. ‘Would you gentlemen like to see some of it?’

There’s no way they can decline—humouring him might be useful—, so the coppers are led through a tour of some of Incledon’s treasures. 

One of the rooms in the ground floor has been transformed into a vault. No apertures to let in natural lights and steel-clad doors, complicated locks give the room top-notch security. In it, controlled temperature allows the best possible conservation. The room is barely furnished: a book case taking one entire wall on one end, mahogany tables with empty bookstands, a small desk, and a few chairs. The proud owner doesn’t invite them to sit down.

He unlocks some of the drawers inserted in the walls and pulls out faded manuscripts. Letters from Mozart to his father addressed in French, short scores—minuets and part of a symphony, an unfinished aria, and various sketches peppered with various sums.

‘Poor guy was always running after money,’ explains Incledon, pointing to the latter.

The blank walls aren’t totally bare. A few framed prints are hanging here and there, grouped in apparent themes. A few opera playbills, portraits whose names are inscribed beneath the sitters. There’s even an oil painting of Mozart, one that Morse recognises from its figuring on the front cover of the biography he owns.

‘Not the original, of course,’ Incledon explains with a grimace. ‘I commissioned a copy from the Mozarteum Foundation.’

Morse comes closer and notices a name he doesn’t recognise signed in the lower corner with a flourish. ‘Bigger than theirs, of course,’ Incledon complements helpfully, and Morse nods, remembering that copyists are supposed to use a different size from the original so no mistake is possible.

Next to the portrait of Mozart, there’s a more modest ensemble of portraits, etchings and engravings. A blond man offering a bouquet of nosegay, his stance, half expectant, half afraid. A young woman with a roundish face, not yet out of adolescence, wearing a straw hat covered with flowers. Another three-quarter likeness of the same woman, all wide eyes and modest décolletage, looking at the observer through her eyelashes—and for a second, Morse sees a superposition of Joan’s mischievous expression when she’s feeling her way into his silences.

‘Ah, you’ve spotted it!’ 

Morse turns, raising his eyebrow in inquiry.

‘—my English corner! They were Mozart’s English friends!’

‘Not English, sir, British!” Morse can’t help correcting. ‘Michael Kelly was an Irish tenor, and Nancy Storace was half-Italian…’

‘Know them, do you?’

‘Only through the liner notes of my _Nozze di Figaro_ recording,’ Morse hastens to say, seeing how nonplussed Incledon sounds. ‘They also sang at the Oxford Musical Festival in front of Haydn.’

The precision does much for his host’s equanimity. He drones on, pointing out to the rapidly uninterested Strange and Thursday how Kelly played billiards with Mozart, how Storace was the Vienna audience’s darling soprano, how Mozart wrote the main role of his _Marriage of Figaro_ for her and also an aria where he featured at the keyboard, a sort of musical conversation inscribed for all eternity. ‘A meeting of souls,’ Incledon extrapolates with lyricism, ‘a lover’s kiss through time and place.’

But all this has been going long enough. Frequent glimpses at his watch from Strange and a decidedly turning down of Thursday’s mouth convey their mounting impatience. Therefore, their gracious host finishes somehow in haste the tour of his exhibits, with flowing regrets of having taken their time. Standing rigidly at the door, a liveried automaton waits for them when they cross the corridor, and Incledon bids them good-bye, reiterating his good wishes and pleasure at the reunification of the ‘ _Quam olim da capo_ ’ with its original folio.

As they walk back through the empty gilded and white splendour of the mansion, Morse can’t help pricking up his ears for a familiar step. But the marble floor only resonates with theirs, and the voice which reaches his ears is only Strange’s.

‘Awfully helpful, wasn’t he?’

‘To the point of saying he’ll keep mum on the subject?’ Thursday pipes in. ‘Maybe.’

Morse huffs and runs a careless hand through his hair. ‘ _Esprit de corps_ ,’ he says bitterly. ‘Team spirit or hope that he’ll be the first to find the missing scrap.’

Collectors are just as keen to show off their goods as they are to keep silent on the underhand ways of procuring them. If there’s a sure thing in all this sorry business, it’s that the theft of the autograph has been commissioned. No one could ever display openly such a prize. 

Strange nods noncommittally, but presses Morse for more, but the latter reads no more in Incledon’s eyes than greed and unabashed regret. If he could have procured the piece, he would have, no hesitation about it.

Nonetheless, this leads them nowhere for the heart of the case. As regards the Young Man in Green shot dead on Morse’s front door, his identity is as unknown as the ‘Man in Grey’ who kept pestering Mozart for the completion of the _Requiem_. And it irks Morse just as much.

But it’s no longer his job. He’s got to accept it and see a man totally unfit for the job gather the wreaths of Victory in the end.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **H. C. Robbins Landon** (1926-2009) was a real-life Haydn Scholar, with impressive accomplishments. He did much to advance Haydn and Mozart studies. (See [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._C._Robbins_Landon)).
> 
> The **extract of the _Gentleman’s Magazine for July 1791_** is authentic and can be found in a facsimile [here](https://archive.org/details/gentlemansmagaz343unkngoog/page/n84) and [there](https://archive.org/details/gentlemansmagaz343unkngoog/page/n86).
> 
>  **Ann(a) Selina ‘Nancy’ Storace** (1765-1817) was a half-English half-Italian soprano. She was a huge operatic star in Italy, before going to Vienna. Mozart composed the role of Susanna in _The Marriage of Figaro_ for her in 1786, and Haydn also liked and admired her. It has been asserted that Storace was Mozart's lover, however contemporary evidence is scarce. In Italy, she befriended Irish tenor **Michael Kelly** (1762-1826). He also sang in Mozart’s opera. They both went back to England in 1787, and afterwards, they had very flourishing operatic careers in England, especially in London at the Drury Lane Theatre (in English operas) and at the Italian Opera house, the King’s Theatre. Kelly was also a composer, an opera manager and associated with the Prince Regent. (The engraving of Michael Kelly is a derivative portrait of this [one held at the Garrick Club in London.](http://garrick.ssl.co.uk/object-g0364))  
>   
> When Haydn was first invited in England in 1790 for a concert tour, he was a fabulous success. He was also warmly welcomed by Storace and Kelly whom he had met in Vienna. In 1791, when Haydn received a degree of Doctor of Music in Oxford, both were hired for the ‘Grand Musical Festival’ at the Sheldonian. (By the way, Haydn also conducted a symphony later nicknamed [the ‘Oxford’ Symphony](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._92_\(Haydn\)).) As Nancy Storace and Michael Kelly were friends of both Haydn and Mozart, AND also had a musical connection to Oxford, I couldn’t resist quoting this at some length! (More about them on Wikipedia: [Nancy Storace](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Storace) and [Michael Kelly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Kelly_\(tenor\)).)
> 
> To have a look at **Bixby’s house** , watch this [video of Waddesdon Manor](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_7Gra2O5O0)!
> 
>  **John Emery** (1777-1822) made his first stage appearance at 15 years-old, playing Old Crazy (the role of a feeble old man) in a farce, _Peeping Tom_. The miniature portrait owned by Dr. Emery is supposed to be the one currently held at the [National Portrait Gallery in London](https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw02111/John-Emery). (See [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Emery_\(English_actor\)).)
> 
> **_So, what do you think of this journey through Morse’s past (and former futures)? If you let me know, this will make my day!_**
> 
> **NEXT: In which our Hero muses on hero worship (among other things).**


	4. Libera eum de ore leonis

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Again, THANK YOU for your comments and encouragement! They mean the world to me!**

_Libera eum de ore leonis_  
Deliver him from the lion’s mouth  
( _Offertory_ , Requiem Mass. Attributed to Thomas of Celano.)

  
  


‘ _They ought to have known,_ ’ reasons Morse. ‘ _In a town where everyone knows everyone else’s business, where goss has almost become part of the curriculum, we ought to have known that it would leak out._ ’ 

But it’s no less aggravating.

The thunderclap begins with a short paragraph in _The Oxford Mail_.

Not the short report regarding the shooting. That one was merely a statement of the bare facts, without any insistence on the main witness, merely a brief mention of Woodstock Road. Division probably had something to do with it, as a copper being a logical suspect for receiving isn’t an offence that it wants to advertise.

Morse supposes that Joan still living at Miss Frazil’s also has to do with the discrete reporting in the local paper. One look at Joan’s still tense face, and Dorothea would sit on her reporter’s instincts for a while. Besides, there’s not much Joan can tell her friend. She would carefully conceal from Dorothea the existence of the envelope labelled with Morse’s name and its contents.

Besides, Morse carefully hides anything that might upset Joan.

Like the fact that the bullets fired are from a .460 Weatherby Magnum. Used for elephant shooting. Any of them would have proved deadly, but the repeated firing shows that the killer was in dead earnest.

Highly unusual in Oxford, murder by safari shooting. As usual as tigers loose in the woods, anyway.

_If Joan hadn’t somehow bent down at the right moment…_

When he reflects on it, sweat courses on Morse’s brow, so he focuses with even more energy on the folder spread out on his desk. Nothing so colourful in it. There’s nothing in Ronald Beavis’ life which explained his death… or even his life.

_Nothing_ , and that’s it, alas. Merely emptiness.

Morse closes his eyes wearily, and that void comes back to haunt him as if he were standing again in the small pathetic flat. The booze, the records. He knows that Rosalind Calloway was a big seller in her time, that it’s merely a matter of statistics to find her records at someone’s, but still…

He remembers going out of the bedsit, his hands folded so tightly the knuckles showed white. Thursday’s certainty rings in his ears with the same reassurance, ‘ _He had no family to keep him on the straight. Lot to be said for family,_ ’ and his own reply still aches as much, ‘ _And what if you don’t have any? Do you think that’s how you end up your days? Alone in some two-bob kip, nothing but a bottle for company?_ ’ And he wonders what would have happened to him if he had not made ‘ _better choices_ ,’ as his future father-in-law assured him.

_Choices_. As if _his_ choices were the key. 

But he never did make a choice. Not really.

Joan did. She accepted his proposal.

_What if she hadn’t?_

And again, the unanswerable question comes back, in its endless loop. _Why does she want me? She can do so much better._

A dull _thump_ of paper hitting wood makes him start and raise his eyes. Strange is standing near his desk, and a carefully folded copy of _The Oxford Mail_ now rests on the top of the file Morse was browsing through.

With a slight frown, he picks it up, and reads, ‘ _An announcement will shortly be made which should interest all music lovers_.’ His frown etches deeper.

‘How?’ he snaps.

‘The question I wanted to ask you, matey.’ Strange’s voice is definitively icy.

‘Nothing to do with me,’ affirms Morse, and he hopes the other Sergeant can hear the affronted rebuttal as well as the promise he puts into the sentence.

‘Leak won’t please Division.’

Morse’s lips curl back and Strange is prompt to use his display of emotions against him. ‘Can’t help it now, but some could—’

‘—suspect me of talking to the press?’ suggests Morse with a sneer. ‘Wouldn’t give me any advantage, would it?’

If Strange is a quick learner, he’ll understand that this kind of politics never was up Morse’s sleeve. Sure enough, he relents immediately, raising a protesting hand. ‘Never suspected you… Any idea?’ 

‘None. Unless… Incledon?’

‘What? Oh, no,’ Strange says, dismissing the idea with a careless wave of the hand. ‘Got nothing to gain in it.’

He picks up the newspaper, peering at the article. ‘At least, no names given.’ 

‘None to give, I expect,’ Morse says. ‘Any progress on the bloke’s identity?’

Strange sighs heavily. ‘None. Done the round of the usual dodgy dealers with a post-mortem photograph. Unknown in those circles; not a customer, not a dealer either.’ 

He suddenly lowers his head, gazing intently at his shoes. From what Morse can see of them, they’re clean enough; nothing to warrant such a close scrutiny, except embarrassment.

And so, it comes, soon enough. ‘Sorry about it, matey.’

Morse’s jaw clenches hard and he swallows his retort.

‘ _It_.’ Such a neutral euphemism to refer to all the bother that has harassed him for the last week.

The opening of all his crates of books. The inspection of his bank account, of his expenditures during the last year. The inquiries into his buying a house. _Is he a collector? Did he know about Mozart’s_ Requiem? Even TOSCA’s chorus master has been subjected to inquiry, to no avail.

The only light relief left to Morse in his ordeals is thinking of the poor DC’s face when he confronted Aunt Matilda’s ire. The old woman boasts a sharp tongue with a deadly accuracy, and the report of her being asked on the phone how she came by her great-grandfather’s collection of books and why she decided to bequeath them to her great-nephew, is…well, _refreshing_. Even Joan, now that she has met the peevish old lady, managed to have a good laugh about it.

Still, they found nothing because there’s nothing to find, but past experiences make Morse wary. He wouldn’t be surprised if they found something because they _wanted_ to.

The last three days have been hellish, and Morse is glad to retreat into another case, even if the Beavis one doesn’t look like much, and he knows that Joan is glad of having her hands full at work with relocating the families from Jericho who lost their homes after the arson.

The quicker this case is done with, the quicker he’ll try to forget this itch that he cannot scratch. Therefore, he merely replies, ‘Nothing you could do,’ and goes ostensibly back to his file, feeling the weight of Strange’s gaze on his shoulders, then hearing his irresolute step back to his own desk.

Unfortunately, barely half an hour later, Morse’s peace is broken again by another footstep. Lighter, this time. Finally, when he raises his eyes with a quarrelsome look, Trewlove’s fresh face meets them tentatively.

‘Sorry to disturb you, sir, but there’s a young woman requesting to see you.’

Morse frowns uncomfortably, but his face clears quickly. His unexpected visitor isn’t Joan, the WPC would have said so directly.

‘Did she give her name?’

‘No, sir. She’s waiting in the lobby.’

When Morse enters it, he immediately spots the woman. Not that there is a huge choice to pick her from.

The only woman under forty is a twenty-something little thing with light auburn hair, wearing a modest skirt whose length is much lower than the current dictate of fashion. At each newcomer, she raises worried eyes from the patient scrutiny of a handbag over which her crossed hands transform her into a cheap copy of the Mona Lisa. However, the shape of her mouth has no distant likeness with Leonardo’s sitter; unsmiling, it trembles with nervousness.

He stops in front of her chair. ‘Miss? Did you want to see me? I’m Sergeant Morse.’

The girl—for she is no more than a girl, despite her apparent age—almost stumbles in her haste to get up. ‘Are you? I—I… Forgive me for being so forward, but… did you see my boyfriend?’

‘Miss…’ Morse queries with an interrogative lilt.

‘Tyrer, Nelly Tyrer.’ She lets go of a breathy gasp without meaning to. ‘Oh, I meant…last week.’

‘—Tyrer, I’m not sure I understand what you mean to say.’

While talking, Morse guides her skilfully until he pushes a door leading to an interview room, empty except for a table and four chairs. ‘Would you like something? Some tea perhaps?’

A cigarette doesn’t seem the right thing to offer, not with such a diffident mouse of a girl.

At her timid nod, he says, ‘I’ll be right back,’ and hastens back to his desk. Strange is still here, head buried in a ton of paperwork, some of it headed with a foreign script.

‘Strange?’ Morse interrupts.

‘Matey?’

‘Would you mind coming in for a minute?’ Something in his tone draws Strange’s attention, and his head turns sharply. ‘Probably nothing, but… A girl is here, asking for me and wanting to know _if I met her boyfriend last week_.’

There’s no need to repeat the seemingly average sentence. Strange bounces up from his chair.

‘Can you come by with a cup of tea? Promised her one. Usual place.’

When Morse enters the room, Miss Tyrer is frozen in the same position. She hasn’t even tried to powder her nose in the meantime, a sure sign of her anxiety.

Morse is making gauche small talk when Strange appears, carrying a tray holding three cups of tea, a jug of milk and a sugar bowl—the sheer amount of sugar cubes in it, an obvious proof that Strange has reasoned as Endeavour did, and believes that a copious amount of it will be needed in Miss Tyrer’s cup before long.

Strange places a cuppa before the young woman. Her thanks are but a murmur, and she looks at him with some surprise.

‘Sergeant Strange,’ introduces Morse. ‘He’ll be of some help, I’m sure.’

In his tone, without Miss Tyrer’s knowledge, lurks the hope that Strange will indeed help with the grief that will probably engulf her widening eyes before long.

‘Now, you said that you wanted to see Sergeant Morse?’ picks up Strange.

‘Yes, yes. Mark said—’ 

She bites her lips, then explains more confidently, ‘Mark Trusler, my boyfriend. Last week, he told me that he’d come to see you.’ Her eyes turn towards Morse. There is no guile in them, merely a faint bewilderment. ‘—so, when I had no news...’ She pauses, then her thumb traces nervously the handle of her cup as she goes on, ‘—but he told me that he’d go away for a journey for a while. So, I waited a bit. But...’

The sentence floats between the three of them. Miss Tyrer swallows with difficulty and asks in a tiny voice, ‘Did you see him, after all?’

It’s clear that the poor girl has no idea that the voyage Trusler embarked upon is to ‘ _the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveller returns_.’

The men exchange a glance. Trying to gain some time, Strange asks gently, ‘Did you bring a photograph with you?’

She nods, babbling suddenly, ‘Mrs. Warner—that’s my landlady—she said that I’d better bring one, this was the most recent one, even if it’s a little blurry.’ 

Opening her handbag, she takes out a notebook and pulls a snapshot out.

In a slightly puffed-up stance, his arm around her waist, poses the shy Owl in Green whose index finger once pressed Morse’s doorbell.

  


* * *

  


Whatever kindness they use for breaking the news, the outcome is the same: tears and unbelief. Morse wears his most stoic face while Strange strings up meaningless platitudes to the grief-stricken young woman.

After a while, she stops crying, dries her eyes with a resolute wipe, then asks, her eyes boring into Morse’s, ‘Why?’

The same question is uppermost in all three of their minds, one which will have to be rooted out from only insufficient clues. It bounces up the drab walls, and goes back to them tinted with the same greyness.

It turns out that Mark Truster is Dr. Emery’s favoured student. A College boy.

_So why has no one mentioned his absence?_ ‘Oh,’ replies the girl, ‘he has no friends at Lonsdale, quite the opposite. But to imagine that one of his rivals would... no, of course not!’ 

_The cause of their resentment?_ ‘Probably because Emery offered him tenure in a few years.’ But in the meantime, ‘Mark was little more than a slave, copying, collating, neglecting his own work to further Emery's glory,’ Miss Tyrer says with a flash of anger. 

She knows little about the academic part of Trusler’s life, it turns out, as she’s but a lowly clerk, obviously still in awe of him for having stooped so low as to distinguish her. She seems to have looked at the young man with reverence and didn’t much care about his daily work.

This kind of hero worship could be fine for a while, but it must grate on the nerves pretty soon, Morse muses irrelevantly. Fortunately, Joan has much more sense than that. He’d hate to have a wife yes-saying him for everything.

Strange’s next inquiry brings his focus back to the questioning. ‘Do you know why he wanted to see Sergeant Morse?’

Again, there’s uncertainty in the girl’s eyes. ‘He didn’t say.’

Her fingers clutch at her soggy handkerchief, kneading it into an indistinguishable shape. When it appears that she cannot distort it further without tearing it into strips, Miss Tyrer ventures with caution, ‘Well… I’m not sure if it’s relevant…’ Again, she goes silent, hunching over the table.

In front of her, both men bide their time, until she blurts out what most needs saying. ‘When I saw Mark the day before, he was angry, saying that Emery was a double-crossing—’ Miss Tyrer checks and looks imploringly at Morse.

‘I get his meaning,’ he says with the briefest of reassuring smiles. ‘And then?’

‘Mark said that he’d pay for it, and that he had the means to—to do him harm. That he was smarter that Emery took him for…’ Again, she wavers. Again, Morse silently encourages her to go on. ‘But he said it with much more…’ Her hand flies to her mouth to screen her trembling lips. ‘He was really brainy, Mark, he was…’

Strange nods placatingly. ‘The manner he said it isn’t really important, miss.’

Morse wants to contradict him, to object that obviously choice of words _do_ count and import shades of meaning, but the closed expression on his colleague’s face dissuades him. The bereaved girl doesn’t seem one able to recall exact sentences anyway, merely the gist of them. And what she said already makes his brain buzz with questions.

‘Did he tell you why?’ Strange presses on.

She shakes her head. Apart from being overworked and having to do all sort of errands for Dr. Emery, Mark Trusler never disclosed any details to her.

Strange’s eyes meet Morse’s, their intent clear. He’ll have to ask Emery about it, and he doesn’t relish the thought. Morse braces himself into his chair, suddenly defensive; he won’t return to Lonsdale College with him. Strange made clear he wanted full rein on the case, let him deal with it, then! 

Then the key question comes. And now that his involvement in the matter is being investigated, there’s nothing else he can do but listen with bated breath to the answer, as Strange asks what imports the most to Morse’s professional future in Oxford. ‘Did your boyfriend know Sergeant Morse?’

For the first time, there’s a glow in the girl’s eyes, as she exclaims instantly with unmistakable sincerity, ‘Oh, no! Some chap pointed Mr. Morse out to him at some concert, saying that he was “the Singing Detective”.’ She glances up at Morse, her whole stance betraying how much his hobby makes him ‘a strange one’ in her reckoning.

A faint groan escapes Morse’s throat, and Strange casts a quick glance at him not deprived of pity.

Oblivious to the mortification felt by the interested party, Miss Tyrer blathers on, her voice dwindling into a soft monochord tone. ‘Mark found it oddish, and he spoke about it to Dr. Emery who told him he—you used to be a College boy, but not one of _his_ flock. Mark never spoke about Mr. Morse before telling me that.’

Then she finds new strength as a thought belatedly strikes her. ‘Do you think Mark wanted to see a copper who knew music? To tell him about Dr. Emery, say?’ Her voice vibrates with new hope. Doubtless, it would lessen her pain to know that the tyrannical don would be punished for his exploitation of her man.

Morse shakes his head, dispelling her hope with some reluctance. ‘I’m afraid it’s too soon to tell, miss. What about his coming to see me? Did he want to communicate something to me?’

She doesn’t know, not a thing. But when Strange probes about scores and old manuscripts, Miss Tyrer grows more talkative, and it opens attractive avenues of investigation.

Her late boyfriend had no money to waste on antique scores or books; he read them in the libraries. However, Mark Trusler had a gift; he could imitate almost any writing. Not spontaneously, but with some sweating over them. A hobby, he told her, and his copies were almost as good as the originals.

A giggle escapes her. Mark even crafted an autograph sonnet by Byron for her, for her birthday. Her brow creases in concentration as she struggles to remember the verse ‘ _I worship more, but cannot love thee less_.’ What fun! She framed it and hung it in her bedroom. Oh, and Mark also was a fast copyist, that’s why he was so engrossed in working for Dr. Emery. Does it help?

By the set of their faces, one could easily understand that the Sergeants feel surprise at her first disclosure. But she’s oblivious, even when consternation quickly follows. In Strange’s face, Morse sees the reflection of the quick succession of tasks whose boxes will have to be checked. This unexpected development overthrows all their tentative intellectual constructions. Mark Trusler was a forger.

If the Mozart autograph score is genuine, does that mean that Trusler already made copies, hoping to sell them clandestinely to collectors who should know better… and who could never complain openly if they found out they’ve been swindled?

If it isn’t, what was it patterned from? A book? It seems too perfect a copy not to have been taken from the original. If so, it may be still be held somewhere in the Thames Valley.

The question is, whatever the alternative, where did it came from?

  


* * *

  


‘You’re out of the woods, then,’ Joan tells Morse in a reasonable tone, as she places the last of the cleaned plates of their tea onto the dish drainer.

Morse takes his time, wiping out the last drops of water from it before nodding curtly, even if privately he believes he hasn’t heard the last of it.

Almost as exasperating as the suspicion directed at him, he’s seen enough hastily covered grins during the day to last him a lifetime. Being nicknamed ‘the Singing Detective’ again by snickering coppers who should know better isn’t something he fondly remembers from his working day. Yet, overhearing Trewlove snapping at the new blood, DC Fancy, about it, and knowing that he’ll never dare allude to it again, is a salve to his wounded feelings.

More balm comes his way as Joan takes off the tea towel encircling her waist and hangs it onto the rack. Her next move is to reach for him and give him a brief peck on the mouth before dancing out of his loose embrace with a light step.

The more time passes, the more openly affectionate Joan is, as if their approaching nuptials gave her more licence to express her feelings.

Morse looks at her, and instead of her fresh, radiant beauty, he sees in a flash what Joan could be twenty years from now, and he thinks that that imaginary Joan with a few silvery hairs in her thick and wavy dark mane and deeper lines of laughter in her face will be even more beautiful than the girl he slowly fell in love with while waiting for her father in their house entrance. Like malt whisky turned golden and smooth, she’ll get better with age, her sweet flavour becoming ambrosia.

‘What?’ the lady of his thoughts asks sharply.

‘Nothing,’ he grins unrepentantly, realizing he’s staring.

‘Penny for your thoughts? They looked nice.’

He slips an arm around her shoulders. ‘Join me in the den? We can discuss them there.’

At least, the two coats of paint have dried up and the new curtains are hung, even if the books and records have still to find their definite place on the yet-to-be-erected shelves. More importantly, there’s a pair of Chesterfield armchairs and a turntable awaiting them. But Joan chooses to perch herself on the arm of his armchair, then lets herself glide gracefully across the smooth leather until she’s cosily ensconced in Morse’s lap. She nestles closer to him and asks expectantly, ‘Care to tell me?’

He winds his arms around her, her warm weight a sweet, welcome burden, and begins carefully, ‘Tony’s family owns a cottage near Brighton. He offered to lend it to us for our honeymoon. Plenty of privacy, a smallish park, nearby seaside if we want a change… What do you think of it?’

‘Sounds appealing,’ Joan says slowly, before perking up, ‘Which Tony?’

‘Anthony Donn. We were flatmates once.’

‘Oh, _that_ Tony.’ Morse lifts an interrogatory eyebrow over amused eyes, and Joan elucidates, ‘The Tony who managed to share a flat with you without going bonkers.’

Morse laughs at her matter-of-fact tone, but there’s an undercurrent of disquiet beneath his cheerfulness. ‘“ _Abandon hope all ye who enter here_ ”? So speaks the bride?’

‘All ye who don’t share your delightful quirks,’ amends Joan. ‘Does Tony like Wagner? And Puccini? And—’

Morse’s face says it all.

There’s a note of gleeful triumph in her voice when she replies. ‘Ha-ah! Told you. How did you manage?’ ‘ _Not to kill each other_ ’ rests unsaid.

‘He wasn’t there much,’ avows Morse.

She bursts out laughing, and threads her hand through his hair slowly, pulling his head sideway in order to say into his ear, ‘You should have seen your face! Afraid that I’ll have second thoughts?’

He shakes his head in denial in the compass of the sweet hold of her hands. Nonetheless the half-formed fear, made more real for her expressing it, stings more acutely.

Joan suddenly bites her lips, her eyes filling with guilt. ‘Oh! I’m a real beast! I didn’t mean…’ To emphasize her contrition, her lips reach for the corner of his mouth and find instead the underside of his jaw. She’s leaving a trail of slow kisses towards his chin when her progress is stopped by Endeavour’s lips.

The kiss that follows is a proper, deep one, and one which leaves them equally satisfied. Joan feels like purring, and Morse holds her more closely if that’s even possible.

After a few contented moments, Joan says, ‘It’s perfect,’ in a dreamy tone that Morse mirrors by putting his cheek over hers as she elaborates, ‘Brighton, I mean!’ with a laughing voice which makes clear she relishes the double entendre.

‘Just Brighton?’ he teases.

‘Brighton with you, certainly.’ There’s no doubt that she means every syllable.

‘So it’s a “yes”?’

‘It would be lovely. Thank Tony from the both of us.’

‘You’ll do it yourself, he’s my best man.’

The Donns have properties everywhere, however they mostly live in London and Oxford. Tony’s _Pater_ never leaves London now, while Tony—who has taken the load off his father’s shoulders and settled it firmly on his own—flitters here and there, administrating the family fortune.

‘A—cottage, you said?’ Joan’s voice is still cautious even if she’s in love with the idea.

Hearing it, Morse smirks openly, ‘It’s nothing like the wooden shack where I retired…’ 

Joan hits him playfully above his heart, ‘Take me to something like that, and you’ll regret it, Mr. Morse!’

‘Threats, Miss Thursday?’

But before she answers, a huge yawn unexpectedly robs her of speech and splits her mouth open. ‘Sorry!’

‘Time for you to go home,’ retorts Morse instead.

Reluctantly, Joan moves away from him when he sits straighter, rises from Morse’s knees, stretches slowly and yawns again. ‘I shouldn’t drive, you know,’ she says with every appearance of practicality. ‘Can’t I sleep here? Bed’s big enough for two, and I’ve already brought some of my stuff here.’

Her outwardly mock attempt doesn’t work any better than the other times. She may as well have done her best Mrs Peel impersonation, batted her eyes with a seductive pout, for all the good it does her. Morse’s face is adamant in his refusal, but he calmly suggests, ‘I can drive you back in the Jag. You can take the bus to come pick up your Mini tomorrow evening.’

What he wants to say is ‘I don’t trust myself,’ but at the same moment, Joan insists, ‘Can’t I stay? I trust you,’ and her slightly parted and offered lips are there for the taking, an irresistible temptation that he won’t be able to discard for long.

It’s a struggle not to respond to her offering. He swore to himself that he’d be true to his word, and his word, he’ll keep, even if it kills him. If he doesn’t, Fred Thursday will probably do so.

However, his searching glance doesn’t miss how Joan bites her lip before lowering her eyes with a faint blush, when she finally acknowledges that she stands before a steel door, tightly sealed and impassable.

‘No good,’ he can’t help observing, as Joan defeatedly picks up coat and handbag. ‘But it was a good try.’

‘Was it?’ Her sparkling eyes plunge into his, without shame, with a half-laughing half-penitent glint. ‘Not quite enough! I’ll have to keep trying.’

‘Try away, try away…’

‘Oh!’ she says with a hint of impatience, ‘do you really have to enjoy it so much?’

‘Let it alone, Joan. We only have about seven weeks to wait…’ And he turns smouldering blue-grey eyes in their casket of fine laugh wrinkles upon her rigid back as she steps outside. 

‘The longest of my life,’ she mumbles as she stands near the kerb, waiting for Endeavour to open the passenger’s door of the Jag.

Morse doesn’t know it yet, but those weeks will also be the longest weeks of his life.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **‘ _I worship more, but cannot love thee less_.’** is a quote from Lord Byron’s sonnet “ _[Sonnet, To The Same [Genevra]](https://internetpoem.com/george-gordon-byron/sonnet-to-the-same-genevra-poem/)_.”  
>   
> ‘ **Morse looks at her, and instead of her fresh, radiant beauty…** ’ was inspired by a song, ‘ _Le temps s’écrit sur son visage_ ’ (Time is written on your face) , sung by Yves Duteil. (French lyrics [here](https://greatsong.net/PAROLES-YVES-DUTEIL,LE-TEMPS-S-ECRIT-SUR-TON-VISAGE,101254521.html).)  
>   
> ‘ **Casket of wrinkles** ’ isn't mine, I read it some place but I can't remember where. (Ooops.)  
>   
>  _ **Any thoughts? Comments? Questions? I’d love to find out! And... please, stay safe!**_  
>   
>  **NEXT: In which our Hero and Heroine attend a press conference and live to regret it.**


	5. Quidquid latet apparebit

_Quidquid latet apparebit_  
Whatever is hidden will appear  
( _Sequentia_ , Requiem Mass. Attributed to Thomas of Celano.)

  
  


Strange’s activity speeds up with a vengeance. If one so placid-looking could be compared to a male Kali, the simile would be perfect. He’s on every front, unearthing every possible lead with the tenacity of a fox terrier. But it feels like he’s spitting in Hell.

He goes back to the book and manuscript dealers in and around Oxford, shoving a picture of Mark Trusler under their noses, suggesting serious misgivings regarding any piece he might have sold to them. But the warning is for zilch, as none of them admit having bought anything from Trusler. Strange has to believe their injured protestations: if they had served as intermediaries, the repercussions would be dire for their businesses.

The Sergeant’s investigations also draw a blank regarding his other more immediate source. Dr. Emery, when he answers Strange’s ‘invitation’ and comes up to the Cowley nick, is so ruffled by the undignified summons that it takes some time to pry some info out of him. With a tremor due as much to indignation as to outward surprise, the don expresses his shock at the death of the young man and refutes all knowledge of his eventual dodgy dealings.

‘Thought he got the hump,’ explains Strange to Morse over a pint at the _Lamb and Flag_. ‘Something about not taking some well-meant criticism.’ He traces an incomplete pattern with the froth spilled over the table top, adding resignedly, ‘Academia…,’ his voice trailing with a world of innuendo.

‘Hmph,’ replies Morse noncommittally, his mouth busily draining his beer.

‘Model student, greatly helpful. Paid him for some score copying, to help him out. The poor sod was on scholarship, you know. No money or connection to get the… stuff.’ 

Strange casts a quick look about to make certain there are no eager ears around. But no, the attentions of the other patrons are solidly affixed on the pitchers and various pints held in their hands. 

Morse leans his elbows over the table and looks at Strange sardonically. ‘What do you want me to say?’

‘Whatever you think?’

‘Presently? That I’m well behind schedule. We’ll have to begin our new life smelling like ironmonger's shopkeepers.’

Strange’s face conveys his absolute incomprehension.

‘Joan and I,’ Morse states with as much patience he can muster. ‘Having nosy coppers at home for the better part of three days didn’t help my renovating any.’ New aggravation flickers over his face. ‘Painting’s not entirely finished yet and my shelves are still in kit form all over the floor,’ he adds with a meaningful glance which slips over his interlocutor like water off a duck's back.

‘Is that all you can think about?’

‘Mr. Bright made it clear that I was forbidden to think much about Mozart’s _Requiem_. So, I’m not.’ With a flick of his wrist, Morse tilts the edge of his pint south and swallows the last drops. ‘Obeying orders,’ he adds with finality.

There’s a stubborn glint in his eyes showing the pleasure he takes at being so contrary, and Strange, ever thorough, tries another tack. ‘Any idea how Trusler could have procured the…err…item? Heard anything in your days at Lonsdale?’

Morse shrugs carelessly. ‘No. As you know, Oxford has many scholars, adequate dodgy dealers and not enough coppers. You could make inquiries until Doomsday and not get to the bottom of it. Town is Town, and Gown is Gown, “ _and never the twain shall meet_ ”.’

‘You’d let it slide?’

‘You’ll have to, won’t you? It’s recovered; that’s the important thing, isn’t it?’

Strange peers into his pint and finds it as empty as Morse’s. He’s about to rise for a second round, when Morse’s fidgeting on his seat informs him that he’d better fire away his last question before he gets up and goes out. ‘Obvious, ain’t it? Score-setting when Trusler took off with it.’

Flinching at the atrocious pun, Morse frowns even more severely. ‘I don’t like the obvious.’

‘You never do, but sometimes, it’s just—obvious.’

‘If you say so.’

Suddenly, the background buzz of mingled voices swallows him up like quicksand; Morse can’t hear his own thoughts, and that’s the thing he needs the most right now. Legs and arms knocking together in his haste to get away, he springs up from his seat, shoulders into his coat and flings back as he turns on his heels, ‘Don’t you forget, though, there’s another bit in the middle of nowhere!’

Unruffled, Strange replies in the same manner, ‘Sometimes, you’re more trouble than you’re worth, matey!’

Startled, Morse retraces his steps, scowling. ‘How so?’

‘Just that my—mates had to be persuaded to let it drop.’

‘And I should thank you for that?’ 

Peer as he could, Strange wouldn’t find an ounce of gratitude in Morse’s expression… if he ever searched for it.

‘You _know_ that I didn’t know the man.’ Morse’s lowered voice doesn’t hide his exasperation, even though Strange makes sympathetic noises.

‘Hmmph!’ snorts Morse angrily, and he strides out like a solitary arrow into the dusk, with all the lack of grace of a gangly colt.

  


* * *

  


Even if he isn’t part of the proceedings, rumours keep Morse abreast of the case; that, and Strange’s remarks, always issued with a straight face. ‘ _Fishing for info_ ,’ thinks Morse deprecatingly. 

Besides, the comings and goings to the evidence lockers of a certain piece—afterward secured in Mr. Bright’s personal safe—are the talk of the nick, until it is common knowledge among the coppers that something significant is going on.

Then, after two weeks have departed where all days of yesteryear go, Mr. Bright summons Morse—‘out of courtesy,’ declares the Chief Superintendent—to inform him of the headways in the case.

‘Morse isn’t at fault,’ Mr. Bright imports calmly, and nothing specific can be brought against Trusler either, apart from receiving. Despite his forgery proclivities, no ties were uncovered between this victim of a foul murder and the Oxford underworld. Strange’s inquiries show that Eddie Nero’s fingers aren’t yet plunging into the pie of Academic forgery, and the provenance of the bit of Mozartian score remains a mystery.

Besides, the Chief Constable of the Oxford City Police has summoned another expert, Mr. Bright discloses, one coming from London. And after another hush-hush conference, Foreign Affairs and the Austrian Embassy suggested that the director of the Austrian National Library hop to Oxford by the next available plane.

 _Herr Professor Doktor_ Raninger is too happy to comply, also bringing in tow the curator specifically in charge of the autograph score and another expert from the Mozarteum International Foundation.

It takes less than an hour to the Viennese and Salzburg experts to proclaim, eyes shimmering, that the fragment is indeed genuine. And another hour for the Embassy to formally request its return to its rightful owner and repository.

The eventuality has been taken into account, and Foreign Affairs and the Oxford City Police act quickly. They jointly call a press conference two days later, titillating a selection of excited British and foreign reporters with a teaser stating that the Police, thanks to their excellence and skills, have recovered a priceless musical artefact, and will make an announcement at four o’clock. After some deliberations, it will take place in one of the reception rooms of the Town Hall, big enough to host the event.

Even though a centuries-old so-called ‘Curse of King Tut’ has waited for centuries to strike, it will wait for his investigation a few hours more. Morse swears to himself that he’ll make it.

So will Mr. Bright and Jim Strange, standing modestly behind a row of big cheeses, while they inform the world at large that the Mozart _Requiem_ autograph is from now on, if still unfinished, at least a little bit more complete.

If the CS was worried about proving the value of his men to Division in the midst of the dreaded reorganization, an international exposure should demonstrate it without doubt. And that’s perfectly understood by Sergeant Strange and the officers privy to the announcement.

Among the coppers, only one champs at the bit—the very one who immediately understood what they were dealing with. But in this case, as in previous others, Morse is the fifth wheel and doesn’t get to have his say.

  


* * *

  


‘ _It’s jam packed_ ,’ Joan considers, as she edges her way between thongs of people. At the other side of the reception room, she identifies Dee, already seated in the first row, by her knot of auburn hair. Of course, Miss Frazil wouldn’t miss it. Besides her, Dexter grabs his camera, poised for action.

Even if Miss Thursday doesn’t figure on the list of guests, going on and off the Town Hall at all hours has its advantage. She’s a familiar figure to Security now, so a smile lets her in, and Joan congratulates herself once more for volunteering to spend the afternoon doing the boring errands the other trainee neglected to do in time. Her conscience doesn’t torment her for her defection, though. Her chores are done with, and done well.

As unobtrusively as she can, she finds a quiet spot, picking a seat in the last row of chairs, near the exit. She doesn’t need to see the Mozart fragment up close; she only wants to know what’s going on, as Morse is irritatingly tight-lipped about it. Since the beginning of this case, he has been retreating into himself, as if his brain were forever grappling with incomplete definitions for a peculiarly clever crossword puzzle, pulling out answers, considering them from every angle, then ruthlessly discarding them.

The _Oxford Mail_ editor-in-chief isn't the only professional reporter here. By the snatches of languages that she overhears, Joan guesses that many Continental newspapers have sent their correspondents to Oxford, pronto. There even are some cameras crews; telly producers must have sensed a juicy bulletin to dispatch them over here.

Standing conspicuously by the side of the platform, the Mayor is surveying the brouhaha with satisfaction, while behind him, Mr. Bright manages to look even more formidable than the taller man, in his usual unassuming way. One by one, the officials take their place behind a long table covered in dark velvet matching the drapes on the wall. There are cardboards tags printed with their names in front of them, among mikes and glasses of water. Right in the middle of the table, there is an empty bookstand, drawing all interested eyes upon it.

As a small ripple in the crowd announces new entrances in the already fully-packed reception room, without thinking, Joan turns her head away from the platform and spots familiar unruly hair, framed between heads and shoulders fighting their way into the cluster of latecomers. Morse has arrived.

Whether he's fuming not to be included among the officials or relieved to be spared media attention is uncertain. He’s found a corner on the other side of the door and is leaning against the wall, too far away for her to see his eyes properly. His severe profile discloses nothing of his feelings; nevertheless, his drooping mouth attests that his judgment won’t be favourable.

A tempest of clicks created by camera shutters reacts to the Mayor taking his seat in the middle of the row. Sweet music to his ears; he immediately puffs up like an overfed rooster, Joan thinks uncharitably. But she has reasons enough from her job in Social Services to know that underneath that polished glittering shell lies meanness.

He raises a hand and silence swells among the attentive audience like an undulating veil.

‘It’s my privilege,’ he announces with a well-modulated voice, ‘to host this press conference. The City of Oxford is proud to be the seat of a wonderful discovery. A really valuable musical work, long thought to have been lost, has been recovered thanks to the Oxford City Police.’ 

His eyes flitter over the Chief Constable who picks up the thread, adding that the police discovered it during a routine investigation and immediately engaged the steps to make sure of its authenticity.

Standing at the end of the room, Joan’s lips compress with annoyance. _Trust them to gloss over the actual circumstances of the discovery. Morse’s expertise, to be precise!_ Her eyes automatically rove over to her fiancé’s silhouette. Though immobile as a statue, waves of disapproval ripple out of him. Of course, ever precise, this kind of exaggeration disgusts him. It’s no ‘work’ that has been recovered, merely a fragment of a piece of Music history.

On the front row, some attentive observers may notice the fleeting smile stretching Miss Frazil's lips, but neither Joan nor Morse are aware of it, situated as they are in the room. For _The Oxford Mail_ , it's undoubtedly the high point of their Art coverage of the season, made even more sweet for the cryptic announcement it has run days before, well ahead of their unsuspecting media rivals.

When the Austrian curators’ turn comes, the audience is sufficiently intrigued to follow with attention a brief reminder of the last moments of Mozart’s life with mounting expectation. Pens scribble hastily on note pads, and for a while, the assembly closely resembles a classroom. The tale of the daring Brussels theft is given with as few flourishes, in matter-of-fact voices rendered even more dull by a slight foreign accent.

The bringing of a glass case wrapped in velvet would be almost an anti-climax if the mention of Mozart’s _Requiem_ and all its surrounding Romantic legends didn’t weave its own special spell. Heads raise in expectation as two coppers come to stand before the platform, the glass case between them. The Chief Constable then takes his place, his hands clutching at the velvet, waiting for the most propitious moment to take it off the glass.

On the other side of the room, Morse’s head seems to be falling harder back on the unyielding wall, made no smoother by its tapestried covering, while photographers go into frenzied action as the velvet cover discloses a tiny scrap of manuscript laying on a dark background.

‘Doesn’t look like much!’ someone comments not far from Joan, and she must bite her tongue not to retort that it’s not the cover that makes the book.

In front, cameras close in as the Mozart fragment—still resting on its velvet cushion—is removed from its casing, then held high with gloved hands by the Austrian curator, his jaw working each time a flash bulb explodes in his face. The poor man must have had instructions, as Morse’s face wears the same incredulous and barely held-in-check fury at each flash of white light.

When it’s time for the reporters to ask questions, the most interesting ones are Dorothea Frazil’s. It almost seems as if she had inside information—‘Reliable sources,’ she’d call them—, since she doesn’t ask much about the manuscript history, but more about the concealed manner of its discovery.

 _Where does it come from? Is the previous possessor alive or dead? Has he been taken in custody? Is that a case of an international art heist? The Shadow’s, maybe?_ Her voice is persuasive, inviting confidence, but there’s a glint of rapier-like steel underneath and Joan can almost see the usual Cheshire Cat grin that accompanies its creamy smoothness. 

When he hears the famous robber’s nickname, Morse scoffs so loudly that the people closer to him turn around to stare at him. He doesn’t pay heed at all, his attention directed at the speakers. 

Yet one gaze lingers further on him, then, as if drawn by the sparkly eyes gazing at Morse from aside, sails up to them and focuses on them in its turn. Totally unaware of this scrutiny, Joan goes on sharing her attention between the official discourses and her fiancé’s reactions.

She breathes a little easier when Dee’s queries about Mark Trusler are deflected skilfully: the former possessor of the ‘ _Quam olim da capo_ ’ didn’t reply to the questions and the enquiry is still ongoing. However, there’s no hesitation in Joan’s mind. Dorothea knows something, and she’s holding on to that with all the ferociousness of a lioness. If there’s a scoop ahead, there’s nothing she won’t do to get it before any of her competitors.

As the conference unfurls, Joan understands that there’s nothing more to be gained by staying there. Questions come by more slowly, the waffle is even more disappointing. There’s whispering among the crowd now, as the Mayor sets off again, and goes back to his favourite topic, the excellence of his administration, blah blah blah… A few people in the back shamelessly creep out of the room.

It seems to bore Morse as senseless as it does Joan. She gets up as he inches slowly towards the door, preparing to get away, when his escape route is cut off by his fiancée. For a second, sheer surprise makes him disclose a flash of joy which makes Joan’s heart beat faster.

She discloses it in an unguarded smile. ‘Hello,’ she whispers brightly, as he schools his face into official blandness. ‘Total waste of time, wasn’t it?’

Morse mumbles unhappily, ‘I've never heard so many lies. It was worse than an election campaign.’

‘You’ve got the right of it, Sergeant!’ a male voice interferes.

Morse spins on his heels, his movement revealing a portly man with receding hair. His clothes are conservative, but with a hint of ostentation that sits ill with their cut. The shoulders seem somehow shiny, as if they had been rubbed with a glowing powder, even though Joan sees nothing that could account for it. The fabric, maybe?

Morse’s fit of temper settles more comfortably on his brow when he recognizes the man. ‘Hoping to find a way to get the other?’ he flings at him without any attempt at politeness.

The answer is as brutal. ‘I don't see the point in having money if one doesn't abuse it!’ However, a smile creases the face, creating more wrinkles, as the man goes on more soothingly, ‘Come on, Mr. Morse, let a guy have his joke!’ as Morse grows sourer by the second.

Smoothly, the man turns to Joan, with a softer smile. Seeing that Morse has no intention of making introductions, she offers her hand, saying, ‘Joan Thursday. Morse’s fiancée.’

‘Jo-Ann…’ the man repeats, breaking it down in a thoughtful manner. Instead of shaking her hand, he suddenly bows over it, and raises it quickly to his lips. She can’t refrain from a slight jolt as she feels them hover above her skin. Taking an involuntary step backwards, she feels Morse’s puzzled gaze upon her.

‘Pleased to meet you, Mr.—’

‘Incledon. Charles Incledon.’ At her look devoid of any recognition, he adds, ‘I gather Mr. Morse didn’t speak about me at all, eh?’

Joan merely manages to look more confused and Morse more inscrutably haughty. But that doesn’t faze Incledon at all. ‘I’m a collector, my dear. A modest Texas collector.’

‘He merely owns the most important Mozart repository held in private hands,’ Morse slips in with noticeable irony.

Despite his ruddy face, the man manages to look as bashful as a teenager. ‘So kind of you to say!’ he almost simpers, and the sudden change somehow makes Joan inch closer to Morse.

They exchange few words after that, as Morse’s obvious impatience cuts them short. ‘Polite bloke,’ Joan nonetheless remarks, as Incledon turns his back on them and slowly walks out of the room, his progress hindered by the crowd.

‘Hmph,’ Morse utters for an answer. 

She casts him a probing look. ‘You don’t like him? He seemed… nice for a millionaire.’

‘Don’t say that to me, it always makes me suspicious. He’s gone straight to the top of my list!’

‘Which list? Suspects? May I remind you—’

‘Don’t! I know it only too well… Strange—’

He’s about to start grumbling about it again when Joan pats his arm supportively. Morse stops in mid-sentence and looks at her with a sheepish expression.

The corners of her mouth rise, mirroring his expression. ‘I know, darling.’

‘Fancy a quick pint before we go back home for tea? It’s too late now to go back to the nick,’ he offers by way of apology.

 _Home_. The word has escaped Endeavour’s mouth and the effect is the same for them both. It’s not ‘home’ yet for one of them, but it already seems like it; more and more each day.

‘Yeah, I’m thirsty.’

Stealthily, her hand slips in the crook of Morse’s arm and for once, he doesn’t shy away from it, his other hand coming to rest briefly upon hers under cover of the crowd.

Waiting for the exiting horde to slowly go out, they unhurriedly reach the door leading to a large corridor. There, the circulation is flowing more freely. Casually looking around, Joan locates Incledon’s departing back when alarm shot through her. Her hand clasps Endeavour’s arm a little too tightly and his train of thought is derailed. He looks, first at her worried face, then in the direction of her gaze.

A few feet away, in an island of comparative quietness, Incledon is speaking energetically to a man wearing a camera around his neck and to another who stares back at Morse when the American points directly at them. His words are drowned in the surrounding ruckus of voices and feet, of chairs scrapping on the floor when they’re being pushed out of the way as the press conference reaches its end in the adjoining reception room.

‘Uh-oh!’ Joan thinks in a flash. But they have no time to react as the man makes headway against the current of the exiting audience and stops right before them.

‘Greg Michaels, _The Times_ ,’ he announces, boasting. ‘You know something about the _Requiem_ , I’m told.’

‘Less than the experts gathered here,’ Morse says bluntly, in a voice that truly means ‘piss off.’

‘Police, huh? You have to tell me about it,’ Michaels insists.

‘Why should I?’ Morse exclaims, turning his back on him.

The effect isn’t quite what he expects. Instead of being properly chastened, the reporter dugs in his heels and says ponderously, ‘If you don’t tell _me_ , you’ll have to tell _them_.’

Morse casts a look over his shoulder and sees that other interested reporters are closing in, their collective nose sensing another lead. His face takes on a hunted look, swiftly replaced by dismay as Miss Frazil comes by his side.

‘Just give me a quote, Sergeant.’

Thankfully, she doesn’t disclose Morse’s last name, an unusual rudeness that also spares him, in a way.

Not minding it, Morse snaps back, ‘I've no wish to see my name in the papers, Miss Frazil.’ He pauses significantly. ‘As you well know.’

‘And you know, as I do, what good it did to you,’ Dorothea insists sweetly.

‘Precisely,’ says Morse, and taking Joan by the arm, he tries to propel her up the corridor. A few turns, then a stairway, and they’ll be out of reach, in the street. The Jag is parked in front of the Town Hall, a sure means of escape.

‘Do you want to read about it tomorrow, without your input?’

Joan shoots Dorothea an incredulous look, met with a determined one. Dorothea is on the warpath and nothing can stop her now, she understands despondently.

‘Morse, you know that’s it’s them…or me,’ Dorothea almost pleads. ‘Don’t make it too hard on yourself.’

‘Don’t—Is that your idea of a joke?’ he says with rising indignation. Stiffening with anger, Morse seizes Joan’s hand firmly and barrels into the crowd, which opens to let them pass and reforms almost immediately, preventing any effective pursuit by the reporters.

Without a word, they rush across the street. Slightly out of breath, Joan slips into the passenger seat. ‘Where now?’

‘Home,’ says Endeavour. The Jag speeds off, making a few turns for good measure, before taking the right direction.

‘You’ll have to take me home to Dorothea’s afterwards, though.’

A muscle tightens in Morse’s jaw. If he has thought about Joan’s now ambiguous status as Miss Frazil’s guest, now is the moment to change his mind.

Joan looks at him expectantly, but she’s not holding her breath. The odds are not in favour of his letting her sleep over. First of all, her parents would be aghast, and Morse’s position would be compromised at the nick: his Governor would never forgive him. If one man is strict on propriety, it’s her father, not to mention the look on her mother’s face if one of her nosy neighbours began to make insinuations in her hearing.

‘Yes,’ he merely replies under his breath, at his most uncommunicative self. His hands are tense on the wheel, his gestures a touch jerky, but for all that, the car moves smoothly, leaving behind the immediate trouble.

What will be published in tomorrow’s _Oxford Mail_ is the real one.

 _What does Dorothea believe she knows?_ Joan has no idea. Dee didn’t ask her anything, and she didn’t venture any detail. What she wrote, she got out of one of her police sources, then. _Not Morse_. No, not him.

 _Once burned, twice shy._ For all his reluctant admiration for Dee, Morse hates the press. ‘ _Don’t trust them, don’t really believe them!_ ’ is his motto. And above all, he hates having anyone digging up his private concerns.

The glass pane is cold under Joan’s brow, but the soothing coolness doesn’t help with the intersecting ramblings that collide together, nurturing a mounting apprehension.

  


* * *

  


At the office, the only copy of _The Oxford Mail_ usually lies on Viv Wall’s desk, but Joan doesn’t have to rack her mind to find any excuse to borrow it. As soon as she hangs her coat on the peg, the following morning, the older woman calls out to her.

‘Joan? Can you come over?’

‘Coming,’ yells Joan in return, as she hurries through the entrance.

She pokes a head through the office door. What she sees in her superior’s face makes hers twitch in apprehension. ‘Hello, Viv. Did something come up?’

‘Sort of. Close the door, please.’

Joan’s hand on the handle shakes as she does so, apprehension rising fast. Viv never closes her door. On the contrary, she prides herself of her availability. It must be serious. Hastily, she mentally assesses all the files she’s in charge of. _Did she forget some obscure regulation in her first independent assignment?_ She thinks of the families recently relocated and blanches suddenly. _Will one of her mistakes cost them their recently found housings?_

Palms sweating, Joan crosses the room and stops before the desk. Seated behind it, Viv casts a soft look at her. ‘Sit down, Joan.’

She does, solemn-faced, her mind churning, trying to guess what is the matter. But instead of explaining anything, Viv holds out to her a copy of _The Oxford Mail_ , folded so that it discloses the relevant article. 

‘Read it. You’d better see it right away.’

A quick look at the paper is enough; there’s no mention of her supposed blunder. At first, relief is so staggering that her sight blurs, then Joan focuses again on the headline. And her gasp of dismay is so loud that it sounds in her eardrums like a roll of thunder.

Under the headline ‘ _Missing Piece of Mozart’s Requiem Found in Oxford,_ ’ there is a shorter insert titled ‘ _Requiem Fragment intended for Oxford Singing Detective_.’

With growing incredulity, Joan skims through the lines, then begins again more composedly. The content isn’t really damaging.

It’s worse.

‘ _Apart from his identity, the young man found killed in front of a Woodstock Road house some weeks ago held another secret. Prior to his being shot, he handed over an envelope addressed to the owner of the house, unfortunately absent from the scene. Shock and confusion explain why the person it was given to didn’t pass it on to the police until the following morning. It held nothing less that the fragment of the “Requiem.” From a reliable source, we now know that, without the recipient’s expertise, the true nature of the score might have been dismissed, and this musical treasure might well have rotted away in an evidence locker._

_The readers of The Oxford Mail will remember that Sergeant (then Constable) Morse was instrumental to solve the so-called “Phantom of the Opera” murders that made headlines four years ago._

_As of writing, the unfortunate young man’s identity hasn’t been disclosed nor why he found himself in possession of the “Quam olim da capo.” As it will soon get back to its original repository, the mystery may remain intact._ ’

If Joan weren’t already seated, her legs would give way beneath her.

Morse will be absolutely livid.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Believe it or not, this chapter was written months before Series 7 was broadcast, so the discussion between Morse and Strange about Morse not liking ‘obvious’ suspects wasn’t drawn upon it. However, it was based on a piece of dialogue from the episode ‘ _The Remorseful Day_.’  
>   
> I pinched a few lines from the _Inspector Morse_ show:  
> ‘ ** _I don't see the point in having power if one doesn't abuse it_** ’ was originally said by Sir Clixby Bream in ‘ _Death Is Now My Neighbour_.’  
> ‘ ** _I've never heard so many lies. It was like sitting through an election campaign_** ,’ comes from _Second Time Around_.  
> ‘ _ **[It] makes me very suspicious. He goes straight to the top of my list!**_ ’ was first said by Morse in _Last Seen Wearing_.  
>   
>  ** _Thoughts? Comments? I’d be delighted to read them! Again, thank you for your encouragement!_**  
>   
>  **NEXT: In which our Hero and our Heroine get their Fifty-Eight Seconds of Fame.**


	6. Ne me perdas illa die

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I never intended to post so soon, but... today is a bank holiday, and chapters 5 and 6 go back-to-back... so, why not?  
> Besides, it's the last... No, I won't spoil it here! You'll have to read on! 😉  
> Again, thank you for your enthusiastic feedback! It fuels my writer's energy.

_Ne me perdas illa die_  
Do not forsake me on that day  
( _Sequentia_ , Requiem Mass. Attributed to Thomas of Celano.)

  
  


‘Alright,’ Morse spits out, roused and scowling, ‘Say it!’ His hands fold into fists and then relax, finding no other adversary than empty air by his side. He’ll have to use other weapons if he wants to overcome his present foes.

The incriminating paper is placed on Mr. Bright’s desk, between a steel pencil sharpener and a wooden letter rack, neatly aligned. The Chief Superintendent’s index finger pushes it with small nudges until it lies at an exact right angle with his desk blotter.

‘Morse…’ chides Thursday gently.

Morse turns around swiftly, his scowl deepening. ‘Do you believe it too, sir? That I spoke to Miss Frazil?’

‘No,’ asserts Thursday. ‘I don’t.’

‘I don’t, either,’ Mr. Bright says kindly. ‘But it’s unfortunate. Quite unfortunate.’ He sits back on his chair, observing Morse keenly. His wait isn’t a long one.

‘Unfortunate?’ parrots Morse, his voice rising in the high register in a wobbling falsetto. ‘Of course, it’s “unfortunate”! You’re not the one called…’ His voice dwindles with disgust as he finds out he can’t say it aloud.

The silence fills with foreboding on the side of the more senior officers, and with vehemence on the side of the injured party. An oblique ray of light lands on Morse’s face, bringing out the blue in his eyes. He blinks twice then lifts a hasty hand to shield his eyes, shifting away from the offending sun.

‘We have no other choice than to issue an official statement,’ Mr. Bright goes on, as quietly.

Head thrown back at a painful angle, Morse inhales sharply.

It’s insufferable, he can’t bear it again. To have one of his most personal and sacred need ripped out and ridiculed in print, made cheap and public like some sort of disgusting idiosyncrasy—not again.

_No, not again!_

Morse remembers Miss Tyrer’s pitying gaze, Gull’s overt glee, Jakes’ barely disguised mirth, and he reacts with a violence that astounds even himself, crying out in a futile effort to restore at least a modicum of his innocence. ‘I don’t have any rights, don’t I?’ He inhales sharply, trying to hold his temper in check. ‘I didn’t have any choice, sir, remember? Trusler choose to come and die on my front steps, not the other way around!’

‘Now, Morse—’ begins Mr. Bright, bending towards him in an effort at appeasement. 

But his raised hand goes unnoticed, Morse being too heated now to pay any attention to it. Words flood out of his mouth, sharp and cutting. ‘I have no idea who’s Miss Frazil’s snitch! Why don’t you look for him? And not a moment too soon, if you ask me! Have another go into Incledon’s affairs! The bloke’s certainly suspicious. He—’

‘You can't arrest the man just because you don't like him. Playing Romeo to Joan doesn’t—’

‘More's the pity,’ Morse mumbles, cutting off Thursday’s interruption; then his voice rises again, ‘I told you he set that bloody reporter onto me!’ One fist folds even tighter in his trouser pocket when he resumes the list of his grievances. ‘Has Strange made any progress?’

The way it sounds makes clear it’s not a query but a rhetorical question.

‘Let’s not discuss that,’ cuts in Mr. Bright.

It raises Morse’s hackles even straighter and brings angry colour spots to his cheekbones. ‘Funny thing is, as soon as someone doesn’t want to discuss something, I do.’

‘That will be enough, Sergeant!’ This time, Thursday is as incensed as his future-son-in-law. ‘For once, Morse, do as you’re told.’

‘No speaking to the press? Tell them that! They’re not collaborating!’

Indeed, there are still one or two reporters camping on the front step of the nick. More irritatingly, one of them has a camera operator with him. And Morse’s address is public knowledge. It’s in the book, Thursday remembers with a wince. He’s sure to find a welcome committee tonight when he comes home.

Mr. Bright’s flat, practical voice rises again. ‘Thursday, make sure that your daughter also understands that rule. We have no way to enforce it, of course, but it’s for her own good.’

Suddenly, Morse feels like laughing. ‘Does “pass me the salt” count?’ he asks with some asperity. ‘Joan lives at Miss Frazil’s.’ Behind his back, his hands grip one another so hard that he fears that he won’t be able to detach them again. ‘You don’t suspect her, do you?’

His words make an immediate impression, he can see it. Bright gazes intently at Thursday, and the other man shakes his head fractionally. At least, whatever past peccadilloes Thursday ever suspected Joan of doing behind his back, he doesn’t believe she could be that featherbrained.

‘No,’ Bright affirms with finality. ‘All the same, it would be better if she cut off her…association with Miss Frazil for the time being.’

He casts a more compassionate look towards his younger subordinate. Their eyes meet, and Morse’s face falls. It doesn’t take long to set in that, in the last weeks before their wedding, his fiancée will have to obey the strict—and proper—curfew her parents deem her to observe, when she’s back at their home. She has no other place to go.

Now gone are their long—innocent—evenings in their future house. 

That’s another score Morse will have to settle with the press.

In the meantime, the culprit won’t take it with her.

  


* * *

  


It’s a nuisance to come to _The Oxford Mail_ offices. It’s Miss Frazil’s territory and they will be at distinct disadvantage. But having it either at her home or at Morse’s isn’t an option either.

So, they wait until late afternoon before climbing the spiral stairs which lead to the newspaper offices. While the place merely holds good memories for Joan, Morse goes up with a quick, edgy pace, the staccato of his feet echoing with a metallic vibration tingling across her nerves.

The bullpen is almost empty. Joan replies with a smile to the salutations of her former colleagues, all the while wondering who could have… But all her efforts to unload the blame onto another reporter fail miserably. In her heart of hearts, she knows that Dorothea took the responsibility and wrote the stuff.

The blinds screening the editor’s office from the offices are drawn, but a crack lets through a thin slit of electric light.

‘Is Miss Frazil here?’ Joan asks with a toss of the head towards the editor’s door, in as light a voice as she can.

Linda, hurrying to pick up her bag, replies airily, ‘Why don’t you knock?’ and hastens away, sashaying with some exaggeration as she passes Morse by. She casts him a last meaningful look, as she leaves the office, closing the front door behind her.

‘ _Late again for her latest rendezvous_ ,’ thinks Joan. ‘ _The more things change, the more they stay the same_.’ Linda’s endeavours to find herself a boyfriend are, alas, a never-ending joke.

Despite Joan’s sympathy, this tiny reminder of the permanency of things somehow lightens her heart. ‘ _Maybe this interview won’t be so very bad_ ,’ she hopes, but a glance at Morse’s strained face, and her relief flies away as if it had never been.

Morse and Joan are almost alone in the bullpen now, the last reporters tidying up their desks not paying much attention to them.

‘Shall we?’ Joan asks Morse, and without waiting for his assent, knocks briskly on the glass-panelled door.

‘Come in!’ yells a familiar voice.

With her heart in her throat, Joan pushes the handle and obeys the suggestion.

‘Miss Frazil?’ she calls out in the slit of the door. ‘Can you spare us a few minutes?’

‘Don’t stand on ceremony, Joan! Come on in!’

Under Joan’s more confident shove, the door opens more widely, and discloses the desk at the end of the room. As more light enters the office, Miss Frazil raises her head, her pen still hovering over the sheaf of papers spread over her desk.

‘Ah! Morse…’ Briefly, her teeth flash through her smile. ‘Coming to give me a quote?’

As if Morse would really grant her wish, she pushes the sheets away and takes a note pad, her face expectant. Joan bits her lower lip, awaiting the blast.

Morse gives Miss Frazil one of his loftier glances. ‘What do you think?’

The swords are drawn, then. Before they can truly engage, Joan speaks in haste, ‘Actually, we came to ask you a question.’

Dorothea recaps her pen and places it before her. ‘Fire away!’

But Joan’s tongue is stuck to her palate. _How can she phrase it?_ The irony lurking in Dorothea’s eyes has a stilting effect upon her; therefore it’s Morse who requests, ‘How did you know?’

Dorothea shrugs and sidesteps the question neatly. ‘I heard something on the police band. Sounded serious.’

‘Murder usually is.’

A bland statement of fact. Joan quickly glances at Morse. Seemingly at ease, hands in pocket, he seems to have all the time in the world. So does Dorothea, now that she reflects on it.

‘And…well…’ Dorothea’s lids screen her eyes for a second, hiding whatever was beneath that thin veneer. When they open, her voice is as straightforward. ‘The Woodstock Road address drew my attention.’

‘I’ve got a thicker skin that you may think, Miss Frazil.’

Of course, Morse isn’t going to thank her for her worry, but Joan can. ‘Dee… We’re alright. Really.’

The editor opens a drawer and takes out a packet of cigarettes. Without haste, she slips one between her lips, searches into the drawer again until Morse offers her a light with the lighter that he always keeps in his coat. As he steps back as smoothly, retreating behind the invisible boundary that separates them, Dorothea takes a puff off her cigarette and exhales slowly. The smoke soars over her head in a straight line, so forceful is her exhalation.

‘Indeed, you both seem remarkably alive and well.’

‘But?’ Morse says in a dry, sarcastic tone. ‘Isn’t there always a “but”?’

‘I was—relieved when Inspector Thursday called me to inform me of your whereabouts.’

Joan’s hands fly to her mouth. She totally forgot to call Dee to tell her that she would sleep over at her parents, that fateful night. Her contrite eyes meet her hostess’s, clear and considerate.

Before she even begins to phrase it in her mind, Miss Frazil’ voice states, ‘Joan, I understand.’ She gives a tiny shake with her hand, and some ash falls into the ashtray. ‘You had other things on your mind, that night,’ she ventures, giving another pointed look at Morse. ‘And so did you.’

‘Which puts us back to my question. How did you know?’ This time, Morse’s tone sounds more amused than interested, as if it were a question without great import. But, beneath that light tone, Joan hears a hint of—something she cannot quite define.

Dorothea hears it too. ‘Ever heard of “undisclosed sources,” Morse?’

‘Don’t give me that excuse. It won’t wash.’

‘Never thought it would.’ For the briefest of seconds, her lips tighten. ‘I’m protecting my source, if you must know.’

‘We know him—her, then?’ Joan asks eagerly.

 _Someone from the nick, probably. One of the coppers on the scene, maybe even that WPC._ She remembers the young woman leaning on the kitchen wall, poised for action despite her apparent repose, and she can’t help being disappointed. She liked the girl: efficient, controlled, professional. _A woman sure of her place in the universe. Someone after her own heart. Someone she’d like to emulate._

Dorothea exhales another puff and a reluctant reply falls from her lips. ‘You do.’

They wait for her to say something more. She doesn’t—as they should have guessed—, thus Morse has to prompt her again. ‘I never took you for a tease, Miss Frazil.’

A huff of a laugh escapes her, then her eyes turn serious and almost sad. ‘Are you sure you really want to know? Well, then—’

With a flick of the hand, she stubs her cigarette out. It breaks in two in the ashtray, and its crooked form draws Joan’s eyes; these pitiful remains seem to herald some awful revelation. Dorothea might as well have said, ‘ _you asked for it_.’

‘—Joan did.’

The two words hover over the room until they ram into Joan’s understanding.

‘What?’ breaks from Joan, and her exclamation mingles with Morse’s sharp intake of breath.

Under the impact, her head feels as light as an air balloon, and the room begins a jig around her, the stomping around drowning the loud beating of her heart. After a while, the sounds fade away, and Joan finds out she’s now sitting into a chair, her head between her knees.

Under her feet, the lino has a thin dark crack.

‘Breathe deeply,’ Morse’s voice instructs her. Strangely, he doesn’t sound angry at her.

Joan inhales obediently but raises her head so fast that the room goes spinning again.

‘You’d better do as you’re told,’ Morse reiterates. ‘Unless you really want to keel over.’

There’s a hint of a laugh in his voice, and so encouraged, Joan breathes in and out more with a lighter heart. ‘Morse, I—I didn’t!’ she nonetheless blurts out.

‘Of course, you didn’t!’

He’s glowering at Miss Frazil as if she were out of her mind. Far from being stabbed by the baleful glare, she unexpectedly lets out a snort. ‘No, Joan didn’t. Not willingly, at least!’

Carefully, making sure her dizzy head is still attached to her body as she raises it slowly, Joan peers carefully at Dorothea. She doesn’t look at all deranged. In fact, the reporter lights another cigarette with a very smug expression, as if all were right in the world.

‘I don’t get it,’ Joan states flatly.

‘Playing with words, Miss Frazil?’ Morse says at the same moment.

‘It’s my job, Morse,’ retorts Dorothea smartly. ‘But you’re entitled to an explanation.’

Joan straightens gingerly in her chair; she aches everywhere as if she had run up and down the stairs for an entire hour. Besides her, Morse puts a hand on the back of the chair; it brushes her shoulder blades, the warmth emanating from his flesh comforting her. At least, he trusts her, even in an insuperable situation. _Surely, it’s a comforting thought before their marriage?_

‘Joan told me, quite unwittingly,’ begins Dorothea. She plunges her eyes in Joan’s, addressing her directly. ‘When you finally came home, only a fool would have believed that you were all right. I already knew something came up.’ She takes another drag at her cigarette. ‘I heard about it, remember?’

Morse nods. Encouraged, the editor goes on. ‘Joan woke me up. Nightmare.’ Again, she looks at Joan, willing her to understand. ‘A big one. You were rather vocal about it. You said enough to give me some pieces missing from the jigsaw puzzle…’

‘Right,’ Joan says. ‘And the press conference gave you the rest.’ Her flat tone doesn’t betray the acute feeling of betrayal spearing her heart.

She fixes her hands rather than looking at Dorothea. She knows she won’t find the answers in the older woman’s face; she already knows them. Suddenly, she’s at a loss. _What can she say? What can she do?_ She _knew_ that Dee is first and foremost a reporter. Can she blame her for doing her job? 

Then Joan glances round at Morse and hot anger fills her. ‘What are you hoping for? A Pulitzer? Can you imagine what it did to _him_?’

She feels no small satisfaction in seeing Dorothea’s mask slip for a second. No small victory, that. But the editor rallies fast. ‘I can. But Morse understands.’

They both look at him. That Morse might be angry or sour is somewhat to be expected. But he’s not. ‘ _As if he took some pride to deflect anybody’s expectations_ ,’ Joan thinks fondly. This time, he is unflappable until Dorothea repeats, ‘Morse does.’

‘So certain of me, are you?’ He sounds so bitter, and is so entirely Endeavour in a temper that a sense of normality floods back into the scene, and that Joan exhales in pent-up relief.

‘Yes,’ Dorothea says with certainty. ‘You do your job as I do mine. Nothing gets in the way. Would you hesitate a minute if you had to investigate Joan or her father?’

It sinks in. Even if the case could never happen, Joan knows that Morse’s duty would take precedence. However, she tries to get hold of her anger and whip it up. ‘And all this rubbish of the “Singing Detective” was necessary?’

Morse flinches.

‘It has broader appeal,’ Dorothea admits reluctantly. ‘See it as an incentive for ticket selling for TOSCA’s next concert…’

Morse’s eyebrows arch, then he grumbles reluctantly, ‘Without me.’

Both women look at him with some surprise while his shoulders tense. ‘The Choir Master called me to ask me to…curtail my presence for the moment.’ He looks accusingly at Miss Frazil. ‘You knew that we’re rehearsing the _Requiem_ , didn’t you?’

‘You’re not the only one being thorough, Morse,’ she merely acknowledges.

‘Anyway,’ Joan cuts in, ‘it can’t go on like this!’ Her foot almost taps the floor before she refrains the gesture.

It serves her right to be such a fool, and she can’t get cold feet about it. There is a way to get Morse off the hook, and she’s the only one who can do it.

With a toss of her head, she flings her hair back decisively. ‘I’m going to the nick. Now.’ She dares Morse to contradict her, but he doesn’t. Another glance at him decides of the matter. ‘Good. Let’s get this out of the way.’

Silently, Miss Frazil picks up the receiver of the phone and holds it out to Joan. There is approval in her eyes.

After a few words, Joan manages to get her father on the line. ‘Dad? Joan here. Is Mr. Bright still here?’ She takes a shaky breath, somehow comforted by Morse’s hand on her shoulder. ‘I’m—we’re coming over,’ she amends after a quick look up. ‘No, no, nothing serious.—But we need…—Right. See you soon.’

She ends the short conversation, stifling a smile. _Despite everything, how comforting it is that ‘we’ became so quickly ‘Morse and I’ in her father’s understanding._

As she hands back the receiver to Dorothea, she adds, ‘You get the situation, Dee, don’t you?’ Joan gives her a tight little smile. ‘I can no longer live in your house. I’m grateful, truly I am, for your friendship…’

‘—but it would be awkward, not to mention traitorous, for you to stay in contact with a dreaded member of the press…’ Dorothea completes with some overt irony.

‘Dee!’

At her shocked exclamation, Dorothea relents. ‘I expected nothing less.’

‘I have no choice,’ insists Joan.

‘Neither had I.’

There is mutual respect as well as affection in the exchange of words. _Good, it would keep._

Joan nods curtly. ‘I’ll pack up tonight. Morse…’

At the sound of his name, he starts. He seems entirely lost in his thoughts: was he reconfiguring the puzzle, trying to find the overall pattern in a figure missing too many pieces to make any sense? This mystery is like an archaeology dig; there are things all over the place and all the strata are mixed up as if an earthquake reshuffled all the cards. History, doom, hazard, misfortune, heist, possible forgeries. It makes no sense at all, and for all his brilliant intellect, Morse is out of the picture.

At least, they can make sure that he’s not the perfect scapegoat paying for some of the ink spilled on contemporary papers.

When they go back to the Jag, all Joan feels is regret and disappointment that she must break up her association with Miss Frazil in such a cavalier way—but Dorothea left her no choice. Morse comes first, now.

And she hopes that her friend can truly understand it and still accept to be witness at her wedding.

And that she can truly forgive Dee for being no less than who she is.

  


* * *

  


_The Times_ doesn’t consider itself beaten. Miffed that he has been scooped by a local paper, its editor immediately sends the same correspondent to Oxford with the task to get to the bottom of it. Soon, other national papers of a lesser standard follow suit.

If Greg Michaels doesn’t manage to get much more than his colleagues—that is, the official statement issued by the Police giving the bare plain facts—, he succeeds to have another close encounter with Morse.

Fortunately for him, Strange is nearby to render him some assistance. It ends up with the reporter a little the worse for wear—after he tries to hold Morse forcefully by the arm in order to render him more talkative—, the quote he expected flung at him in Latin with a furious snarl that makes him doubt its pertinence, and a flabbergasted Strange who ends up telling his colleague with some unaccustomed sarcasm, ‘You're wasted as a Detective, matey. You should have joined the Diplomatic Corps!’

Morse’s second encounter with the media is as tiresome.

Before he threatens to throw out a cluster of reporters out of his front garden, he’s also heard mumbling, ‘No castle in England for me!’ as he dodges mikes and camera flashes while getting out of the Jag.

It’s Joan who threatens ominously to ‘let out the dog’ to get the reporters gathered on the front kerb or trampling on the bushes to scurry away. However brief, the more colourful part of the altercation finds its way to BBC2’s ‘ _Newsroom_ ’ for an entire airing time of 58 seconds, the other two minutes of the report being devoted to the sensational musical discovery made in Oxford, by way of inserting some official footage taken during the press conference.

Afterwards, Joan—whose profile is clearly recognizable on the BBC2 report as she shoves away a reporter who grabbed her unceremoniously by the elbow—begins to feel paranoid. She can’t help looking over her shoulder frequently, feeling the tell-tale prickling in her neck indicating that someone is stalking her. However, each time she turns around in the street, there’s nothing out of the ordinary, merely passer-byes looking at her askance. So, she tries to shrug the annoyance away and forges on, counting the days until the wedding and focusing on the last-minute house renovation and marriage preparations.

She does well not to lower her guard.

Some astute reporter sums up all the available info and discovers that Joan might well be ‘ _the person the “Quam olim da capo” was given to_ ,’ as Dee phrased it. And he pounces back as fast as the realization hits.

One evening, as Joan exits the Social Services offices, a chap stops her. More tenacious than most, he keeps firing questions at her and she can’t shake him. Hastening her pace, not looking at him, nothing works.

She stops suddenly and the bloke almost careens into her. Standing her ground, Joan says in a loud voice, ‘Don’t you get it? Leave me alone!’ and swears the grimmest cuss word she can remember at the moment. It has as little effect as her previous tries, the man keeps shoving a mike under her nose.

She’s seriously considering a low blow with her handbag when she hears behind her back, ‘Is this man bothering you, miss?’

Joan swivels round and sees, standing solid and reassuring a few feet away, Jim Strange who scrutinizes her with his honest and worried brown eyes.

Her hands lower from their forceful wave, but Strange doesn’t wait for her emphatic ‘yes!’ to tell the reporter to move along. When the meddlesome man has crossed the street, Joan smiles up at her rescuer. ‘Thanks, Jim!’

‘Persistent bugger! How long has this been going on?’

‘No more than five minutes, don’t worry! He kept following me…’ A dimple appears in her cheek. ‘I got the idea of leading him to the nick, but there you are, my personal knight with a shining armour…’ With a light step, she stands on her toe and deposits a light peck on his cheek. ‘Thank you, kind sir!’

‘Where were you going?’ asks Strange, nothing but persistent.

‘To my car.’ Joan raises her hand. In it, held tight, there’s her handbag and a small bag of groceries. ‘Diner. Can’t let Morse starve. I’m driving to Morse’s to deposit it, then I’m off right away to Dad’s. Morse’s still at the nick, isn’t he?’

‘He was when I left,’ Strange says carefully. ‘I’ll drive with you, if I may.’

Joan considers it for a second, then nods decisively. ‘You may. But don’t tell Morse. No need to have him blow his gasket about this. It’s a nine-day wonder, that’s all.’

‘Sure is,’ says Strange. And they leave it at that.

Yet things get even more tedious when another ‘unknown source’—one they can’t pinpoint this time—apprises the reporters of the victim’s identity.

After that disclosure, Miss Tyrer gets her two minutes of fame, crying all her heart content in front of a photographer while she repeats to a keen reporter the gist of her discourse to the Police, to Strange’s deep annoyance. As for Morse, she restricts herself to say that choral singing is a real weird hobby for a grown man, but the way she says it—reluctantly, with a show of looking at the reporter under her lashes—is even more damaging for the ‘Singing Detective.’

The press—apart from _The Oxford Mail_ —goes wild, rehashing theories drilled with holes as wide as an extraction quarry. 

Mr. Bright then decides to issue a second statement, firmly reiterating the confidence of the Police in Sergeant Morse, and reminding the press that a recipient of the George Medal should not be suspected of wrongdoing without material evidence.

That leaves no other resource to the media than to dig up whatever information they can find on Morse—College boy turned copper, outstanding detective, and singer, too!—and to publish outlandish theories for the reason behind Mark Trusler’s unfortunate visit.

Besides, now that they reflect on it… _Couldn’t be Morse the intended victim of the shooting?_

As they fall in love with their own conjecture, more digging up of the cases Morse had a hand into turn up in the papers, to his utmost fury and his colleagues’ circumspection. A copper snitch is clearly having some fun at Morse’s expense and there’s nothing he can do about it before the inquiry is over.

When Joan asks him about it, he merely shrugs it away, and says easily that the Belboroughs are still busy shooting elephants and tigers in Africa, so Bruce can have nothing to do with his attempted demise.

‘ _He’s thought about it, then_ ,’ Joan reflects, and her breath hitches in sudden dismay.

If Endeavour notices, he doesn’t comment on it at all.  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I pinched some snippets of dialogues from ‘ _Inspector Morse_ ’ episodes. Here are the sources:  
> ‘ ** _You're wasted as a copper. You should have joined the Diplomatic Service._** ’ was first said by Morse to Lewis in ‘ _The Sins of the Fathers_ ’.  
> ‘ ** _You can't arrest the man just because you don't like him,_** ’ was originally said by Lewis to Morse. His answer (‘ _More’s the pity’_ ) was also reused in this fic. (‘ _Driven to Distraction_ ’)  
> ‘ ** _It's a very funny thing, but as soon as someone doesn't want to discuss something, I do._** ’ comes from ‘ _Service of All the Dead_ ’.  
>   
>  _ **So, any comment? It would really make my day!**_  
>   
>  **NEXT: In which our Hero does the most stupid thing.**


	7. Salva me, fons pietatis

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all your lovely comments... ❤️  
> And now, without further ado... here it is!

_Salva me, fons pietatis_  
Save me, O font of mercy  
( _Sequentia_ , Requiem Mass. Attributed to Thomas of Celano.)

  
  


_Too choosy, too hesitant, too lazy, too busy._

He could pick any of these excuses. But he doesn’t. _No, not Endeavour Morse!_

Therefore, Joan flings them at him, bitterly glad to observe the brittle adjectives connecting with his armour and smashing it into slivers of frost before collapsing along with them and melting at his feet. Morse is visibly affected; however, the only actual shards are those of the real glass Joan shatters in the sink when it escapes her soapy hands and falls.

‘Sorry!’ she exclaims in a courteous voice, as if politeness and excuses were the order of the evening.

As if Endeavour Morse hadn’t told her, in so many words, that he’s breaking off their engagement.

As if her heart wasn’t slowly shattering into a thousand pieces. Pieces so small that it seems that no amount of glue, no amount of time, could help mend it again.

 _And why?_ Why is her utterly infuriating idiot, dim-witted, dozy fiancé breaking up with her?

_For her own good._

Can you imagine?

He’s not good enough for her, he explains in an insufferably rational voice. He’s bad husband material, tainting her by association with all the falsehoods that people are whispering, printing about him. He can’t drag her into that. He may even have to leave Oxford, and it would mean separating her from her family, her friends, her—

_As if she cared about that!_

The reminiscences of the Blenheim Vale affair have been the last draw. Since allusions recently appeared in print, making it seem far worse than it ever was—‘a copper in prison!’—Morse has been edgy and taciturn, withdrawing in upon himself, not answering her calls. 

Again.

As if their being a couple doesn’t mean that they’ll have to deal with whatever ails him _together_. But no, Endeavour Morse makes a haughty withdrawal beneath his walls and barricades himself with his anguish for sole company, barring the door to anyone who knocks on it. Curling up in a ball, licking his wounds, safely hidden in his fresh paint-smelling lair.

When she first read the infamous article, it took Joan all of her diplomacy—and a few strategic tears—to pry some answers out of Fred Thursday’s locked lips. Her Mum had already given her a short outline when they were waiting for news from her father’s surgery, back then. Now, the picture is a little more delineated, the grim figure fuller; yet, it is as ugly as it previously was, for all the additional strokes of charcoal. But at least, Joan now knows what she’s dealing with.

Then she goes to beard the lion in his den, and she comes prepared, bearing gifts—that is, dinner and company.

And for what?

That’s what the last minutes have taught her. Endeavour Morse isn’t good enough for Joan Thursday and he’s— _crying off._

With all his scintillating intellect, with all the cleverness he keeps shoving into people’s faces, with the sensitivity he can’t hide as it’s etched in his very features, the sad truth is that Endeavour Morse is a complete twit.

And a real prick to boot.

The waves of fury recede enough for Joan to listen to the next grievance that Morse enumerates against his entering the state of matrimony, his manner quite stiff, his face a grey mask showing new lines, his anguished eyes, the only living part of it.

‘—no woman could put up with me. I play my records too loud!’

_Oh, for God’s sake!_

‘I can always get earplugs,’ Joan snaps back, at the end of her tether.

Her panicked thoughts press as heavily upon her as if she were buried under a landslide and struggling to get out, scraping at the earth with her bare nails. Morse’s words rush out and pour relentlessly upon her ears and she can’t find any respite from this unremitting flow, so she turns her back on him and puts away the damp tea-towels, glad to escape his fiery gaze for a while. At this juncture, if she were to meet his eyes, she’s pretty sure the urge to punch him would overcome her, and she can’t do that. No, she can’t. _Yet_. It would be undignified.

But she could change her mind.

Of all the most provoking men of her acquaintance, it must be this one that her heart had chosen!

Joan heaves a great sigh and again, exhorts herself to patience. _Let him get it out of his system!_ Perhaps, she can reason him then—or better still, show him!—why their lives are so intricately woven together.

All she manages to say is, ‘A kitchen is a poor place for a tiff, don’t you think?’ before leading the way into his den. One minute more in the bloody kitchen, and she’ll grab a plate and fling it at his head, thus proving that she’s the kind of hysterical female Morse can do without. She could have added that it already feels so dreadfully ‘married’ to row in a kitchen while washing the dishes, but she doesn’t dare. Now is not the time to pour oil on the fire with levity.

Once there, she sits primly on one of the armchairs. The one she never sits on, because she always ends up on Morse’s lap.

Morse doesn’t mirror her movement. He goes straight to the cabinet upon which sits a tray with a few bottles and glasses, and helps himself with a stiff drink.

Scotch. The bottle is almost empty now. Has he been downing it these last few days? 

He swallows it in one go without any outward sign of satisfaction and indulges himself again, pouring alcohol almost to the brim of his glass.

‘Do you think another one’s a good idea?’ Joan asks tentatively.

Morse’s head snaps around with a violence she isn’t accustomed to. ‘Think?’ Harshness makes his voice throb with an echo she hasn’t heard before. ‘That’s what I want it for. Thinking!’ He nods as savagely towards his glass. ‘I never drink for pleasure!’

‘Wouldn’t you rather rehash it with me instead?’

He frowns uncertainly and shakes his head, but puts his full glass back on the tray nonetheless. With a tiny sigh, Joan straightens herself further into her seat, gripping the armrests with both hands.

‘What do you want me to say?’ Morse asks her in such an arrogant tone that the urge to slap him comes roaring back, even more tempting.

‘Nothing more. I think I get the idea.’ Her tone is reasonable, much too reasonable for all the crazy, idiotic… reasons she’s been hearing for the last twenty minutes. For someone so clever, Morse can be unfathomably stupid sometimes. ‘Sit down, will you? You make my head whirl,’ Joan says in a sensible tone. ‘ _And not only because you’re towering over me_ ,’ her minds supplements.

He doesn’t really oblige, but takes a step backwards, sitting instead on the armrest of the opposite Chesterfield armchair, still some good inches taller than her. They are close enough that if Joan chooses to, she could touch him. But she doesn’t, clasping hers fingers together to refrain the urge to do so.

‘Alright,’ Joan says, her voice progressively getting rough with entreaty. ‘I know what you’re talking about, and of course, it might not be easy at first. Did you ever hear of a marriage that was?’ She huffs a derisive laugh. ‘Even my parents’ isn’t a fairy tale marriage, in spite of appearances. I _do_ know ours might be a tad more difficult than most, sometimes. So what?’ Her head raises up proudly, her eyes searching his. ‘You’re not afraid of difficulties, and neither am I. In fact, we never shy from them!’ 

She raises her hands in a telling gesture, but before they implore him, Joan instinctively leans forward and grasps at his nearest arm to hold it fast.

As if her touch was so unfamiliar that he doesn’t know what to do with it, his other hand hovers over hers; but is it to caress or to detach it? That is the question. 

Now they are both gazing at it, as if the next gesture would herald the outcome of their relationship. Slowly, his hand goes back on his knee, and Joan releases a relieved breath.

‘Endeavour, I’m not… I don’t know any of the answers. And neither do you! We’ll have to find them together,’ she adds with heat when his mouth opens. ‘No, let me speak my mind! I’m telling you we have no choice.’

‘Don’t we? Don’t we all?’

‘Others maybe, but not us! Our marriage might be difficult, but separation—’ Her throat closes and the word, this terrible word, goes through, rasping against her vocal cords; it burns her throat as few things could. ‘—break-up is unthinkable! You know how I feel, and I _know_ how you do.’

‘I can’t—impose it on you!’ There’s desperation in his tone, and Joan’s ears prick up.

 _Is he pushing her away before she could do so? Is he pulling a Susan on her?_ Again, her mind goes back to the first months of their relationship, when he still felt so unsure of them that he proposed out of the blue. He’s trying, really trying, to do the right thing, the proper thing. She’d stake anything on that. 

Overkilling by chivalry, then! This would perfectly be in character. _That_ and a deep-seated fear of having _her_ cry off just before he did.

Joan sneaks a glance at Morse. His back is slumped against the backrest, his face a picture of desolation and torment. The heavy drinking of the last few days is apparent in the shadows creeping under red-rimmed eyes now deeply set in a wan face. The corners of his mouth are more heavily marked than they usually are, drooping as much from exhaustion as from bitterness. This is not the face of a man relishing his new-found freedom. It’s rather the face of a man committing suicide for honourable reasons.

‘ _I’ll give you “honourable” and “decent”!_ ’ Joan’s heart decides pugnaciously.

Therefore, she makes a split-second decision. When she speaks at last, she feels as if her words falter; she’s shaking so much internally that that tremor must certainly spread to her mouth. To Morse’s ears, however, her voice is steady enough when she says, ‘Alright, then.’ 

He raises his gaze from his obstinate inspection of the floorboards. A flash of hurt disbelief and of vexation distorts his face when he hears her calm assent, and it comforts Joan in her decision.

This can’t be the end. 

It _can’t_ be.

Not after all they have shared—likely death, secrecy, laughter, promises, understanding, caresses. A closeness so intimate that hearing the other is as if speaking to one’s own mind.

No, not after they have been so close, indistinguishable from the other, yet keeping their own self.

This is merely the sort of situation where you have to…you must pull the deepest core out of the ruins and clean it, polish it, dress it with patience, fortitude, hope, dignity, poise. And above all, love. And build again from the deep foundations.

‘Alright,’ Joan repeats. ‘I give you a week before it’s final. Give it back to me anytime.’

Her right hand finds her ring finger, closes upon the engagement ring Endeavour gave her, and tugs on it, trying to take it off. _The antique ring belonging to his mother’s family. The ring she hoped that one day their son would give to his fiancée._

Her dramatic gesture fails. The ring catches on her knuckle and she whispers, ‘My fingers are a little swollen, I suppose,’ getting up with as much dignity as she can muster.

As she does so, she sees a fleeting glimpse of bleak pain in his eyes, and steels herself to go on with it.

In the kitchen, Joan soaps up her hands, easing the ring out. As she puts her hand under the running water to rinse them, she notices that pieces of glass are still in the sink and she carefully throws them into the bin.

Not as careful as she would wish. A tiny piece of glass pierces her skin at the top of her pinkie finger and it’s sucking on it that she reinters Morse’s den, the ring in her hand.

‘Here it is!’

It seems heavy when it leaves her palm and falls into Morse’s extended one, rubies and tiny diamond shining dully.

Morse looks at it as if he didn’t know what to do with it, then his fingers fold one after another on the ring like a wilting flower, and he engulfs it in his pocket, away from view.

‘Well, then…’ Joan says diffidently.

What she wants to do is shriek, ‘Stop it, Endeavour! You frightened us both badly. This is stupid! Let’s talk, _really talk_ , about this,’ but she knows that he won’t listen to her right now. She must give it time.

Her only hope is that he’ll miss her so much that in a few days, he’ll listen. Really listen. To her and to his own need of her.

 _But what if she miscalculated?_ Terror suddenly floods her and Joan turns paler.

She can’t focus on that. Not here and now. Without waiting for his reaction, she nods regally and flees his presence, exiting out of the room, out of his house. Out of his heart, maybe.

The front door snaps shut behind her with a final, terrible sound, and for a reason secretly known to Morse, tranquillity goes with her, but Joan doesn’t know it yet.

Morse’s spare key almost burns a hole in Joan’s handbag. It’s her last and only hope.

  


* * *

  


The morning after is horrid. Joan’s sense of self-confidence can’t sustain her any longer, and moreover, there’s the dreaded scrutiny of her parents.

She evades her father’s by getting up late, pleading a migraine and calling in sick, and then by taking shelter in the bathroom as soon as her Dad has deserted it. This way, with her shower at full blast, she won’t even hear Morse’s voice downstairs. Having to mimic their old routine for an attentive audience is beyond her strength.

Win looks at her curiously when she finally comes down. No wonder: dark rings circle her eyes and gives her the look of a sick panda. No amount of makeup can disguise it; rather the contrary.

When Joan begins to toy with her food instead of eating it, pushing eggs from one side of the plate to the other, then drinking another cup of coffee to fill her stomach, Win intervenes. ‘Is everything alright, dear?’

‘Mmm,’ replies Joan, to gain some time. She focuses on the sliced egg yolk forming yellow rivulets in whitened valleys in her plate. Beneath her mumble, she searches frantically for the official excuses she couldn’t find during her sleepless night. None spring to life now; her mind is a blank.

Quietly, Win drags a chair in front of her daughter, sits down and takes her left hand in hers. ‘Something wrong?’

The nakedness of her ring finger is even more blatant now that a slightly paler crease in Joan’s skin displays the absence of her engagement ring. The answer is plain enough for all to see.

Win forges on, ‘A tiff?’

‘Yeah,’ Joan avows at last, casting a quick look at her mother. ‘A bad one.’

‘Bound to happen,’ Win sighs. ‘Nerves, probably.’

‘Nerves? Morse?’ This was an explanation Joan never considered. A cautious glow creeps back into her eyes. ‘You really think so?’

There’s a world of memories behind Win’s eyes. She closes them for a second, and when they hold her daughter’s again, the reminiscences have retreated in more private recesses. ‘Oh, you can’t imagine how nervy a groom can be,’ she says casually, letting go of a light laugh. ‘Dad was really something!’

‘Dad?’

Now, that’s a new one. _Dad?_ He always knows what to do, and why. Never ever hesitates. Imagining her father as a jittery bridegroom is an unexpected picture for Joan. _Was he ever that green?_

‘And?’ she asks, putting both her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands. Besides its appeal, the topic is a distraction she’s happy to seize. ‘He had cold feet?’

‘No, worried about me. The war, you know. We got married during his only leave. We had two weeks. He didn’t want to desert me afterwards…’ Win swallows hard, as the bittersweet first weeks of her married life seem to grow even more tangible as she speaks of it. ‘Later, I went back to Nan’s and Grandpa’s. It was—difficult to go back to being just their daughter.’ The fleeting smile still holds some bitterness. ‘For them, I wasn’t a married woman, only their little girl. Everything had changed, and yet, nothing had.’

And again, there’s a world of restraint, speaking louder than her words, of independence fought for, of daily humiliations swallowed and fortitude sometimes out of reach. And of never stopping to strive for it, despite it all.

Win heaves a sigh, while Joan is too captivated by her tale to stir. ‘Well, to make a long story short, Dad wanted us to wait after the war. For things to get back to normal. But I couldn’t. I didn’t want to take that chance.’

Again, there’s a lot of hushed-up, remembered pain in her sparse words. ‘We argued. A lot. Wasted time, that. And he finally backed down.’ A pause. ‘He found out that a man has to have something—someone, especially when he goes—’

This time, the pause lingers on. ‘So, fight for it, Joan!’ Win says in a steadier voice.

‘I will,’ Joan asserts. ‘But how? Morse is—’ She searches for adjectives. _Stubborn? Arrogant?_ There are so many things that define him, none of them easily expressed with mere words. ‘Well, you know…’ she ends up saying.

Win nods. ‘Very much like Dad, before he ate humble pie.’

 _Humble pie?_ Joan will never look at her father again in the same light.

‘As for this,’ Win casts a quick glance at Joan’s naked ring finger. ‘—I’ll tell Dad that you sent it to the jeweller to be cleaned. Got paint on it…’

Joan’s heart swells. She gets up, circles the table, and nests her head in the hollow between Win’s shoulder and her neck; a gesture she thought forgotten along with her childhood years. ‘Mum, you’re the best.’

Win doesn’t reply, but her right hand finds Joan’s hair and pats it a little awkwardly.

  


* * *

  


Morse is a tenacious prick, that much is clear, and Joan needs a plan to achieve her ends. Yet her mind isn’t at ease, even once she determines that. 

_How will she bend Morse’s resolve?_ It’s quicker said than done.

Until she met Morse, Joan was convinced that she wasn’t the kind of girl who fell flat in front of a man; she just wasn’t the type. She still believes it, but now sneaking doubt often invades her certainty. She may refuse to do his bidding, but she can’t completely ignore it, either. Just this once, she’ll try to circumvent it entirely. After all, if she wins the stakes, they will decide together from now on.

Once, a long time ago, Gillian told her raptly that the young man she was dating was ‘The One,’ with such confidence that Joan had found it, not only odd, but sickly. One didn’t fall in love that way, abandoning all reason for something that might turn out to be smoke and mirrors in the end. But all these months learning to know Morse have shown Joan that there is also something totally illogical with attractiveness. Turning the problem around as often as she wishes, she can’t deny that Morse has done something very weird to her, has changed some of her outlook of life, has tempered some of her judgment. But her mind is still her own. Most of the time.

However, at present, she’s still unresolved. _What will she say to him? How will he react?_

Joan knows him too well to comfort herself with the idea that two days are enough to mollify him. However, if she waits too long, Morse will have time to solidify into his latest defensive stance, and it will be harder to break down the defences he has built around him.

All her leisure hours are spent examining the problem, but try as she may, Joan doesn’t know what to do.

On the bright side, the papers have moved on to the latest juicy news, Mozart’s _Requiem_ and Morse’s ‘exploits’ being now yesterday’s news as the premiere of _The Pharaoh’s Curse_ at the Roxy cinema, complete with appearances of the stars of the film—especially Emil Valdemar—captures the reporters’ imaginations. This will be of help.

The third day after their argument—not break-up, ‘argument’ Win keeps telling Joan—, all seems to get back to normal. Fred Thursday even stops to look at his daughter with sidelong glances as if Joan’s gaiety was a bit too much.

Then a phone call makes the decision for her.

The cans of grey Dulux paint Morse expected are waiting for him at the ironmonger’s.

The male voice on the other side of the line is so cheerful that Joan doesn’t have the heart to tell the clerk that he should cross out her phone number—rather, her parents’—on his order book for Morse’s orders, leaving only Endeavour’s. Instead, she finds herself agreeing to pick up the two cans of paint after five.

It’s out of her hands now, thinks Joan. Not the paint, exactly, but the situation. She’s going to get hold of the paint, move it to Morse’s house, and wait for him there. Sitting on the front steps or inside, on the doorstep or on the cans, the matter is still undecided. It will probably depend on the weather.

  


* * *

  


When Joan enters _Thames Ironmongery_ ’s, she’s immediately reminded of her goal by a promise outlined in bright colours on a promotional enamel plate blaring out a universal truth: ‘ _DULUX is a home’s best friend!_ ’ Hanging down next to it, various dog leads wait for the pets that they will lead from homes to the gutter to pee while a tray offers temptingly Seagull’s ‘household rolls.’ Bins of various sizes and metals stand side by side with trolleys. Farther away, different lamps are tempting customers with cheery lampshades and a collection of irons, with electric cords carefully coiled up, are ready to use on their respective ironing boards.

Joan navigates her way between enticing piles until she reaches the counter at the end of the shop, taking care not to tangle her hair in the wares hung on the low ceiling—strainers, assorted hotties in different colours, storm lamps and even a vegetable mill.

‘You called,’ she says to the obliging young man who eyes her with obvious admiration. ‘I—’

‘Don’t I wish!’ he answers quickly.

Joan can’t help laughing. ‘There’s an order of two cans of paint waiting for Morse. Dulux, Grey number 4.’

As the sales clerk looks it up, she adds, ‘New at _Thames Ironmongery_ ’s? I don’t remember seeing you before.’

‘Been here for a week.’ He raises his eyes from the book and adds significantly, ‘But I’ll remember you for sure!’

‘Aren’t you saying that to all your customers?’

As he’s about to refute it, Joan adds quickly, ‘Do you have some turpentine? Oh, and two paintbrushes.’ _The last ones are useless. Morse forgot to clean them after their last use. They’ll have to_ —and her heart spasms when she reflects that she might not be able to use that ‘ _they_ ’ as confidently, if her gamble fails.

Without catching the fleeting twitch of her lips, the young man turns around and finds what he’s looking for in the various piles of wares stacked behind the counter. He smiles as he bends down and effortlessly places two cans on the counter. ‘You name it, we have it, miss.’

Joan eyes the two-gallons cans dubiously. ‘Can you help me to put it in my car? I’m not sure…’ She looks at her shoes. With those heels, there’s no way she can balance the cans along with her handbag, the brushes and bottle of turpentine until she reaches her car. ‘I had to park farther down the street.’

The young man is only too happy to comply, after a quick look at her hands. He even hoists it all into the boot of her Mini.

‘Say,’ he adds helpfully, looking aghast at the stickers masking the obvious bumps on Joan’s car. ‘if you ever want to paint it over, we’ve got the exact shade of red. Could even give you a hand.’

‘I guess it’ll be junk before I get to do that…’ The man’s face falls, and she adds, ‘But thanks, anyway… err…’

‘Mike,’ he hastens to say, his smile blossoming again with what he takes for interest on her part.

‘Well, Mike… See you!’ Joan slides into the driver’s seat and waves at him for good measure.

She has no idea that this last touch will make a difference for her in the end.

  


* * *

  


The rattle coming from the engine when Joan starts her car isn’t a good omen, but she doesn’t really pay attention to it. Mechanics are not her forte: cars are made to transport her from Place A to Place B, and they hold no other mystique or interest for her. They are merely serviceable mechanics, no more.

However, she begins to feel wary when an insidious smell of burning paper invades the compartment and the clutch feels suddenly sticky under her hand.

Prudently, she reduces speed immediately and gradually stops on the edge of the road. Not a moment too soon, as the odour of scorched… thingummy grows more noticeable as the Mini engine begins to cough like a consumptive patient. As luck has it, Joan is away from any immediate dwelling, but she’s too bloody annoyed to notice it immediately.

If she were superstitious, she would even shudder with consternation. She has just entered the copse that the direct road between Oxford and Chigton Green intersects, not far from the mill stream and the communal orchard. Every fairy tale has the same moral. Nice girls should beware of entering woods on their own.

Her Mini safely parked on the side of the road, Joan rolls her eyes upward. She’s stuck here unless she walks to the next house and asks for help. There’s no point in opening the bonnet and looking inside. That bloody whatsit might get temperamental and blow up in her face in retaliation…

With an exasperated sigh, Joan gathers her bag and coat, and prepares to get out of the car, readying herself for a long, uncomfortable walk. There must be a conspiracy against her: her shoes are not the ones she’d have chosen for a trek across the country, her umbrella is still cosily stuck in her parent’s entrance and the sky heralds some rain. Much more infuriating and stressful, she can say ‘adieu’ to her long-awaited talk with Morse.

She might as well put it off until tomorrow. He isn’t expecting her, and arriving on his doorstep late in the evening when he’s sloshed, having helped himself with any liquid succour available in his house, isn’t the best of ideas. It would be rather counter-productive, especially if she arrives short-tempered, dishevelled, and dead beat.

The door on her side is half-opened when she hears the tell-tale rumbling of a far-away car. It’ll probably pass her by in less of a minute. Quickly, Joan springs up and stands near the Mini, waving her arms above her head.

They’ll see her…they’ve seen her…they are stopping. The coupé halts ahead of her Mini, and a man gets out of it. Infuriatingly, he can’t help smiling with a touch of smugness, as if the sight of a helpless female standing miffed near a broken-down car was a usual, everyday occurrence.

‘Hello,’ he says. ‘Need help?’

‘Hello. Can you have a look at it?’ Joan asks, nodding towards the bonnet of her car.

The man comes nearer with a hesitant stride. ‘Not big on mechanics, I’m afraid. But I can drive you to the nearest garage at Chigton Green.’ When she doesn’t react, he adds helpfully, ‘On Main Road.’

‘Chigton Green? Smashing!’ says Joan, much relieved. ‘Could you? I’m going there, actually.’

Maybe she can ask for Morse’s help, after all. He’s always been there for her, whatever her needs were, when he was only her father’s bagman. Surely, he won’t grudge her that, especially when she was doing him a service, fetching his cans of paint? And maybe, just maybe, it can be a foundation for their talk…

As she focuses on this tempting eventuality, Joan doesn’t notice that her rescuer gets nearer, much closer than politeness allows. A gloved hand suddenly steals over her face, gaging her with a cloth, while an arm goes around her waist as sneakily, holding her in a vice. The cloth smells vaguely similar to damp paper towels and grass clippings, the odour sickly sweet.

Later, Joan will be able to say that being chloroformed isn’t at all like they make it seem in the films. You don’t black out in ten seconds flat. You just feel so dizzy that you can’t resist anything, and afterwards, your mouth tastes as sour as if you had held pennies in it.

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I pinched a few things from ‘ _Inspector Morse_ ’ episodes, to go on with my ‘metafiction reference game.’ Here they are:  
> • **‘ _Too choosy, too hesitant, too lazy, too busy_ ’** are, of course, Inspector Morse’s explanations why he never got married, in ‘ _The Secret of Bay 5B_.’  
> • A bit of dialogue comes from ‘ _The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn_ ’: ‘ ** _No woman'd put up with me, I play my records too loud,_** ’ said Morse, and Philip Ogleby replied, ‘ _You could get her earplugs!_ '  
> • And another, from ‘ _The Remorseful Day_ ’: Joan’s ‘ _ **Do you think another one's a good idea?**_ ’ was originally uttered by Lewis, and Morse also replied, ‘ ** _Think? That's why I want it - to think. I don't drink for pleasure!_** ’  
>   
>  ** _Thames Ironmongery ___** _ _’s is a fictious shop, but[this photograph](https://c8.alamy.com/comp/MN8Y8J/1960s-interior-of-a-traditional-ironmongers-shop-england-uk-cluttered-with-goods-for-and-to-do-up-a-household-or-home-MN8Y8J.jpg) inspired it.  
>   
> Descriptions of **being chloroformed** were inspired by an online discussion board.  
>   
>  _ **I’d love to read what you think of this latest development! Indulge me, pretty please…**_  
>   
>  **NEXT: In which our Hero meets our Heroine’s first cousin.**  
> __


	8. Quantus tremor est futurus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still with me? Thank you so much for your lovely comments on the last chapter!

_Quantus tremor est futurus_  
What dread there will be  
( _Sequentia_ , Requiem Mass. Attributed to Thomas of Celano.)

  
  


‘It’s Morse. I'm going off shift as of 19:31,’ he declares unemotionally into the receiver, his eyes straying to the young woman fidgeting near the phone box she existed from, seconds ago. All her posture bears witness to her exasperation and impatience. ‘Thank you,’ Morse adds before hanging up.

When he exits the phone box, the blond woman smartly dressed in a navy dress is stiffly standing a few feet away from the door, anxiously scanning the few passers-by, swivelling on her heels each time anyone reaches this portion of the street. As her eyes find only disappointments, one after another, Morse yields to a professional urge and asks, ‘Is everything all right?’

The blond girl doesn’t grasp at this proffered straw, snapping, ‘Does it look like it?’ without quite looking at him.

Morse’s frown mirrors hers, and he turns sharply away, preparing to move towards the Radcliffe Camera. As he turns his back to her, the girl casts a good glance at him and changes her mind, extending a hand to stop his progress. ‘I was supposed to be meeting someone’ is her explanation for her rudeness.

‘Ah!’ _Jilted girlfriend?_

‘Where's a good place to get a drink round here?’ she asks without missing a beat.

That’s a good one.

At one time or another, Morse has been a patron of most Oxford pubs, _The Lamb and Flag, The Baby and the Bird, The Horse and Trumpet, The Green Man, The White Horse_. Their nooks and crannies are more familiar to him than his succession of bedsits, even more than Cyril’s house was. But he has no wish to tour them all with blondie, however well-rounded she may be.

However, a spark of admiration escapes him, and the young woman takes a step closer, mistaking his gaze. Morse’s mouth twitches at the corner, with further irony. The girl is pretty, in a goldilocks, eager kind of way, but the only image enticing him is of a smaller dark-haired girl with a playful smile, not that fair and white temptress who makes her interest a little too obvious.

Yet… he’s a free man, and by his own free will.

His hand closes spasmodically on the jewellery box buried in his pocket, his index finger tracing the leather bulge on its own accord.

_He’s a free man, now._

Suddenly, he takes a decision. ‘Mmm… Come with me. I’ll show you the way.’

The girl’s eyes are clear windows into her thirst.

They walk up the street towards the Radcliffe Camera at the same pace, none of the pedestrians paying any attention to them.

  


* * *

  


It begins innocuously enough, with a phone call. The kind of phone call a strict but understanding father can make when, at nearly midnight, he’s had no news from his daughter, while she assured him that very morning that she’d be in before curfew time.

The phone rings three times before Morse unhooks the receiver.

‘Morse,’ he states in a voice a little blurry at the edges.

‘Is she still there?’ asks Thursday, too pissed off to lose time with niceties. ‘I said eleven sharp.’ 

Morse slowly straightens his back, cradling the phone in one hand while holding the receiver to his ear. His abandoned and unopened bottle of Radford’s stands at his feet, forgotten.

‘Joan?’

‘Who else?’ says Thursday in a voice whose irritation is closer to the surface. ‘Is she still there?’

Before excuses have the time to grow and die, the truth is out. ‘I’ve not seen her today, sir.’

There is deafening silence on the other side of the line, and, as if he were standing by his side, Morse almost sees a furrow deepen on Thursday’s brow. Yet the switch from father to copper is even faster.

‘Not seen?’ Thursday repeats. ‘No words from her?’

‘No.’ The same transformation takes place within Morse and he muses aloud, ‘Her bloody Mini may have broken down. I’ll retrace her route with the Jag. I’ll keep you informed.’

As soon as he hangs up, he’s out of the door, going for the car. But the slow driving doesn’t reveal the expected picture: Joan seated in her Mini, fuming while waiting for help, the bonnet wide open, puffs of smoke lazily drifting from it.

He takes the most direct route, the one that Joan mostly uses, his eyes flicking from one side of the road to the other, trying to see past the shadows and moving shapes created by the headlamps. Then he turns around and retraces the other one which Joan often praises for its scenic loveliness. 

But the result is the same. Apart from a few cars appearing suddenly in the glare of his headlamps, the focused faces of the drivers flattened by yellowish light, the road is empty and cold, the trees standing like deaf-and-dumb sentinels looking to the sky. No movement that might even betray the hurry of a pedestrian on the unhospitable road strikes his eyes. No waving of a relieved walker seeing rescue coming her way.

Morse reaches the Thursdays’ house with some trepidation, trying to find comfort in Joan’s possible last change of heart or in Thursday speaking at cross-purpose.

 _No cause to worry. As her ultimatum to Morse hasn’t expired yet, Joan hasn’t told her parents about their separation. Just a bit of misdirection. She went out for an evening with friends. Joan’s lateness is a wretched mishap, nothing an explanation won’t cure_. What he expects to find is anguish and acute mortification when Thursday understands that his bagman won’t become his son-in-law and hasn’t see fit to prepare him for the announcement.

But in his heart of hearts, Morse knows that he’s lying to himself. Joan isn’t the sort to make her parents worry needlessly for nothing. _Especially since her stay at Morse’s bedsit after the Wessex Bank heist_. And, mingled with nagging apprehension, something else is also dawning, a feeling that he suppresses ruthlessly until it dwindles against the barrage of reason Morse throws at it.

However, when he reaches the Thursdays’ house, the embarrassment awaiting him isn’t the one he was half-heartedly bracing himself to face.

When the doorbell rings, it isn’t Win who answers the door, but his almost-date of the evening, the blond girl whom he deserted after pointing out the nearest pub to her.

The shock of recognition is mutual. The girl does a double take that distorts her face in a semblance of a crumpled hanky, and she lets out a startled gasp.

It’s loud enough for Win Thursday to ask from afar, ‘Carol! Who is it?’ Morse hears her hurried steps and hail,—‘Joan?’—as she almost runs towards the door, so he calls out from the threshold, ‘No, it’s Morse!’ to save her from further disillusionment.

‘Morse,’ breathes Win, as she beckons him in. ‘Any news?’

Morse shakes his head, but he promptly adds, seeing desolation replace the light of hope kindling in her eyes, ‘I may have missed her.’

‘Two pairs of eyes are better than one,’ asserts Thursday. He pulls his hat down energetically, smiles at his wife—a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes—, and nods to Morse. ‘Let’s go.’

‘Mrs. Th—Win, Miss,’ Morse salutes the women before exiting the house as fast as he can without looking too precipitous, feeling the young woman’s eyes poring over his back.

‘My niece Carol,’ explains Fred Thursday as they reach the Jag. ‘A good friend of Joan’s. My brother Charlie and his wife are visiting. Put them at the _Mitre_.’

Morse emits a sound of comment. He knows that Thursday doesn’t really expect him to reply, but that he hasn’t missed his expression of astonishment.

Nonetheless, Thursday goes on, ‘Joan didn’t tell you?’ as he takes place in the passenger seat.

‘We spoke of other things when we last saw each other,’ Morse replies truthfully. Fortunately, Thursday doesn’t ask him when.

It’s not yet the time for _that_.

But as they exhaust the possible routes without finding any sign from Joan, they loom nearer the usual questions for a missing person case. ‘ _Has the person been involved in a violent confrontation immediately prior to disappearance? Is this behaviour out of character? Is there any information that the person is likely to cause self-harm or attempt suicide?_ ’

The answer on the first question would be ‘yes;’ the second, ‘maybe’ and the third, Morse can’t bear to think about. And if he were to answer to ‘ _And when did you see her last?_ ’ it would create even more chilling ripples.

Even if nine times out of ten these cases are resolved quite happily, he doesn’t want to test the odds.

  


* * *

  


At long last, on their last pass exploring the possible itineraries, through a copse situated between Oxford and Chigton Green, Thursday spots a flash of red in the headlights by the side of the road. He hasn’t to say anything, as Morse hits the brakes hard as soon as Thursday’s breath catches in his throat.

Leaving the Jag parked at an angle, they both jump out. The sight meeting their eyes is ominous. Stranded in the deep ditch, Joan’s Mini rests on its side, the driver’s side door facing down, hidden under a layer of sludge left from the last rain. If Joan had tried purposely to insert her car into the chasm, she may not have done better.

Without care for his trousers and shoes, Morse clambers down into the ditch. After some not very skilful manoeuvring, he manages to reach the passenger’s side door. It’s still locked, but with the electric torch Thursday throws to him, he manages to see through the window that Joan’s handbag is still inside, and her keys in the ignition.

Bile rising in his throat, he peers more closely at the upholstery. The pale red imitation leather is free of any apparent stain in the same darker shades. He lets out a sigh he wasn’t aware he was holding and yells out his findings tersely in Thursday’s direction.

‘Coming down!’ Thursday tosses back.

‘Careful, sir, it’s slippery!’

The only reply is a decided squelch, followed by some panting as Thursday descends the steep slope gracelessly.

A few minutes are all that he needs to repeat Morse’s action, then he goes to the rear of the Mini and flings open the car boot with some struggle. In it, not much the worse for wear, twin paint cans are still waiting to reach their destination. As for the bonnet, once opened, a faint smell evaporates into the night air, evasive and evanescent.

‘Joan told Win that she’d fetch them for you at _Thames Ironmongery_ ’s after work,’ he explains curtly. ‘Did you know it?’

Morse didn’t. His jaw tightens. This is the final nail in the coffin. Joan would never have wandered off without her handbag and without locking up the boot. She’d have found a way to let them know of her predicament.

Somebody took Joan. There’s no other explanation.

  


* * *

  


The next steps are police routine. Thursday radios the nick for reinforcement, and before long, there is a small task force covering the area, searching for signs of violence.

The portion of the ditch is closed off, but an additional careful search doesn’t reveal anything untoward. No footprints, no skid tracks indicating that Joan lost control of her car, no suspicious bump on its apparent side, no telling traces on the sides of the ditch apart those left by the Mini and the coppers’ movements.

‘As if the Mini was voluntarily pushed off into the ditch,’ reflects Morse, and Thursday nods assent. He’s standing on the edge, trouser legs stained with mud, shoulders hunched and tense, as he watches Dr. DeBryn’s careful and constricted movements inside the wrecked Mini.

‘No trace of blood,’ DeBryn calls out from below, and both men relax for a second before resuming their worried vigil. He slowly frees his upper body from the passenger space, then the clanging shut of the door follows his muffled voice. ‘No mud either, but you already saw that, of course.’

‘I appreciate your coming so fast,’ Thursday assures him when the doctor finds his footing back onto the road. Morse stays silent, but hands him back the bag that DeBryn discharged to him when he was pulling him up.

‘Don’t speak of it. I’m glad my presence wasn’t really necessary,’ DeBryn says again. ‘Strange feared…’ A glance at Morse’s face interrupts his disclosure.

As DeBryn passes Morse by, he nods at him with warmth, and the Sergeant returns it, feeling suddenly naked under the knowing and compassionate gaze.

‘Let’s get to it,’ Thursday commands, and Morse follows suit mutely, getting into the Jag and following Joan’s logical route, if she got off on her own. She may have turned back and walked until the nearest farm.

This faint hope is quickly dispelled. Door-to-door inquiries at nearby houses draw a blank: no young woman has come to place a phone call or ask for help. Morse insists, pulling out a black and white photograph from his wallet—the loving inscription now a bitter, accusing finger pointed at his ineptitude—, but it’s to no avail. Joan was never there; Thursday can see it from the obvious sincerity of the couple standing inside their door.

With almost manic insistence, Morse persists in conducting thorough searches through the bushes and in the woodland near the road leading towards Chigton Green. But they are necessarily incomplete. Reinforcement will come as soon as the sun rises, and there’s nothing to gain by stomping into wet underbrush. Their first survey will have to be completed as soon it’s daylight.

As the night evolves towards dawn, Thursday manages to talk some sense into his bagman, all afire for immediate action. There’s no point in it. They’ll have to take the case with another viewpoint. Morse knows it well, feels it in the core of his frozen bones—he has never felt more chilled, as if ice was coursing through his veins—, but he can’t help looking at the receding countryside when they drive back to Oxford, with something like disgust.

‘She’ll be alright,’ he finally maintains in too loud a voice, to no one in particular, and the sound astounds him. It’s the voice of a drained, overcome man, not even trying to convince himself. Guilt crushes his rib cage, encircling it like a spiked ring of hellish fire, making breathing difficult.

A few seconds later, the man he wasn’t really speaking to replies, ‘She will.’ His tone is slightly more convincing, but not that much. The clues are too obvious to miss: abandoned belongings, no apparent sign of struggle, car neatly hidden out of first sight.

They don’t speak another word until the Jag pulls up at the kerb before Thursday’s house. Morse waits for a minute, lost in thought, after Thursday walks up his garden path, then he drives towards the nick.

There’s something he needs to do.

  


* * *

  


At this early hour, the night shift is still here, a little drowsy, while the day shift begins to stream in. Artificial light fights to maintain his domination upon the timid rays filtering through windowpanes in sore need of washing. Traces of the last rain are still in evidence on the glass, little dots which don’t bear crystal testimony of the initial pristine drops of water.

For once, Morse doesn’t care a jot about the dirty window near his desk, but flings himself wearily on his chair. He switches on his lamp, takes out his wallet and slips out the photograph he used for his useless queries.

Joan’s three-quarter view portrait looks back at him with a smile tinged with impishness and a failed attempt at solemnity. She’s looking at the camera frankly, her shoulders partly bared by a sleeveless top, her hair falling in natural waves upon them. The skilful lighting emphasises wide dreamy eyes, a sensual mouth, and a paraselenic skin covering Joan’s zest for life. With her parting gift to her former colleagues, Claudine Darc has also offered them a window into their souls, and to Morse, a permanent memento of what he foolishly, voluntarily pushed away from the circle of his embrace.

Since he apprised Joan of his decision, he didn’t dare look at it again, even to take it out of his wallet, and all the glimpses he had of the photograph when he produced it repeatedly have dug the stiletto deeper, closer to his heart. Those eyes seem to rummage through it, turn it upside down like a shaken book losing its leaves.

Even now, as he puts the black and white portrait against his typewriter, Morse sees an unknown and unforeseen Joan, a woman both familiar and utterly unknown, as if Claudine had unearthed something carefully hidden and mysterious, even to Joan herself. Something older than her; almost foreign, more mature and understanding. A glimpse of what she’ll become, or a peek into her past that he’ll never know about?

A cough at his shoulder shatters Morse’s concentration, and he raises up blood-injected eyes with an irritated toss of the head, staring at Strange in a not very friendly way.

‘Never seen her before?’ he snaps, flicking the photograph face down on the desk.

Strange has never heard him speak in such a tone; Morse can see it from his face, intently puzzled and embarrassed. His colleague’s powers of observation are accurate: Morse has rarely felt so angrily unhappy before. For a moment, the other Sergeant remains silent in sheer astonishment before venturing, ‘Sorry, matey.’

‘Nothing to do with you.’

With conscious determination, Morse pushes back his chair and goes to the glass partition, pinning Joan’s picture onto the wall, the inscription on the lower right, on the whiteness of Joan’s shoulder, revealed for all to see, ‘ _Always, xxx Joan_.’ His crucible. His penance.

As he uncaps his pen to inscribe Joan’s name next to the photograph, his phone rings. 

Morse strides to his desk, but it’s to be informed by Thursday that Win confirmed her conversation with Joan yesterday morning. She was to pick up Morse’s expected Dulux cans of paint and then go off to Chigton Green. As soon as a DC picks up Thursday, they’ll be off to _Thames Ironmongery_ ’s to question the owner and clerks.

From his flat tone, nothing will come of that, but it’s procedure and the DCI must go with it. Ascertain the missing person’s comings and goings before disappearance is a necessary step. In the meantime, Morse unearths various files—cases that went wrong, girls missing after some unfortunate hitch-hiking or unresolved disappearances—, and begins poring over them.

Less than an hour later, when Thursday arrives, he has nothing much to say. One of the two clerks—name of Mike Dignum—perfectly recalls Joan. He found her cracking, remembers her perfectly and he detailed at length how he helped her to load buckets of paint into her Mini. Even proposed to help her give a coat of paint over the bumps, he said.

At least, it explains the Mini’s location. If it’s not the usual route for Joan to reach Chigton Green, it’s the more logical from _Thames Ironmongery_ ’s. And it narrows down the hour of her disappearance.

As Thursday puts his coat onto the rack, he adds gruffly at Morse’s intention, ‘Joan didn’t call. Carol and Win took turns next to the phone. She’s worried half out of her mind.’

Morse turns his head sharply away from his inspection. As he drives his hands into the pockets of his trousers and his face dissolves in even more angular lines, Thursday takes a good look at him. He’s about to add something else when there’s a rap at the door of his office.

Mr. Bright finds Morse with his back to him, seemingly looking out of a window whose blinds are drawn, tension radiating from him like a high jumper standing in front of a towering wall. At the sound of the door closing behind him, Morse turns, an anxious flash in his eyes. Deciphering the mute answer, he lowers his eyes again, and his foot scrapes nervously against the floor as if he were testing his running abilities.

‘Sir?’ Thursday asks curtly.

‘Nothing yet, the search goes on,’ Mr. Bright explains, then without further preliminaries, he says, ‘None of you can take this case, either.’

‘You want us to take back seat?’

Mr. Bright has the kindness to look contrite. ‘You’re both family. We must follow the rules. DS Strange will be in charge.’ His hand seizes the handle of the door, a prelude to his exit. ‘If he keeps you informed of the progress he makes, and you care to comment on it, that’s no concern of mine.’ Another nod, and he’s gone, leaving his officers speechless.

‘That’s something, at least,’ begins Thursday when Morse’s face stops what he’s about to say midway in his throat.

‘Sir—’ Morse begins, then he halts, guilt written all over his face. ‘I can take the case. I’m not family.’

‘Not yet, technically…’

‘Not even that.’ Morse swallows hard and the sound explodes into the sudden silence like a firecracker. ‘Not ever. Joan and I—we called it quits four days ago.’

It’s like throwing scalding water onto a naked man. Sharp surprise, then pain, spread like wildfire on Thursday’s face. A tiny jerk twists his hands, but he’s master enough of himself to turn slowly and walk towards his desk without a word. Methodically, he takes out his tobacco pouch and fills his pipe. When he’s done, he sits down behind his desk, and says in a voice as calm as his demeanour, gesturing towards a chair with his unlit pipe, ‘Sit down and go on.’

‘There’s nothing more to say, sir,’ Morse replies in a voice without inflection, still standing in the same spot.

‘On the contrary, you interest me greatly.’

‘What’s there to say?’

‘Why, for instance?’ The tone is still courteous, but explosive temper is nearer to the surface.

‘Why?’ After a brief pause, Morse says harshly. ‘Would I actually be the one that makes her happy? I think not. So—’

‘—so you took matters into your own hands?’ Thursday’s ‘Why now?’ is repeated with more strength and even more sharply than the previous one.

Morse licks his lips in a nervous gesture and plunges into explanations as a drowning man seizes a lifeline. ‘Shackling her to me wasn’t—just, or… It was a life sentence. I’m not—’ There’s agony in his face as he struggles for words. The explanation wobbles out of his mouth despite all his endeavours. ‘—not good enough for Joan. The papers made it clear—’

‘And you got to decide that on your own?’

‘Sir!’ The cry speeds out of Morse’s throat like a bullet. ‘I’m—damaged.’ The admission is too much for him and he turns away, shame in his eyes. ‘Good enough for a copper. As for the rest…’

‘You’re alright, if that’s what you’re fretting about.’ The match reaches the pipe and Thursday takes a first good puff out of it. ‘Joan didn’t take it meekly, I suppose.’

A hint of a reluctant smile flickers on Morse’s mouth when he says, ‘No, sir, she didn’t.’

‘That’s my Joanie. Probably gave you a good piece of her mind, too.’

‘That she did,’ Morse admits. His fingers find the jewellery box in his pocket and fiddle with it in a now familiar gesture, and, as he becomes aware of it, his hand leaves this shelter as quickly as if the leather had turned to hot iron.

‘Then think no more about it. It’s not as if you shan’t have time to reconcile.’

After looking at Thursday to see if he would proceed, Morse ventures, with a quick impatient gesture, ‘Could we? What happened is my fault—’

‘Son, you’re not responsible for everything that happens to her. You did her a good turn before. And—’

He can’t finish his sentence. Morse breaks into it as if he couldn’t help himself. ‘She wouldn’t be driving on that road if we hadn’t had a row. Probably thought it would soften me up, coming in like this.’ The way he says it makes obvious it wouldn’t have sufficed.

‘She would. Win told me Joan decided to pick up those cans on her own. She’d have gone anyway.’

Morse doesn’t answer this. If he had, he’d have told his Governor that he’s arguing against his own fear, trying to bend backward to be fair and not to shove guilt onto his bagman, while he should.

Thursday’s leniency surprises him. If Joan took her Mini through an unaccustomed route, it’s because she picked up those bloody paint cans. And if she did so, it was because she hoped the gesture would help to make him change his mind. There’s no way she would have crossed the path of a madman otherwise.

In trying to protect her, he has most probably done her the foulest harm.

Accessory before the facts.

And there’s nothing he won’t do to put it right, now.

  


* * *

  


The next three days bring no release to Morse’s guilt, self-castigation, anger, and anguish. He wants to be alone. To think without interruption. To shape all the meagre clues into a coherent picture. To walk ceaselessly through the crowded streets, wrapped in the isolation of his own depressing reflections, but he can’t. He must carry on.

He does, tackling the ‘Curse of the Mummy’ case with focused, almost manic energy. It takes all he has not to disobey orders and join the search for Joan. At his side, Thursday bristles with the same helpless drive. While he’s at the Roxy, interrogating people, Morse is all too aware that, at the same moment, men and dogs are searching the countryside, Strange questioning neighbours’ alibis and widening the circle until they reach a certainty: Joan was never there.

She drove until her Mini broke down. For some reason, Joan got out of the car before it landed into the ditch, and then disappeared from the surface of the earth.

Morse submits to minute interrogations, as well as the Thursdays. He gives all the detailed information he can think of to Strange, even private snippets, impressions, prejudices, and ideas, feeling Strange’s sympathetic and acute gaze upon him all the while.

Strange duly writes a full report, and when Morse reads it—Strange taking care to let it lie carelessly on his desk during his pub break—, it states all he knew it would. The missing ‘ _Miss Thursday is not likely to have committed suicide_ ,’ ‘ _there is no reason for her to go missing_ ’—at this point, a copper passing through the nearest corridor hears a distinct scoff—, ‘ _there is no recent history of family conflict_ ,’ and ‘ _she has no mental health problems_.’

Besides, any link with old cases is quickly dispelled by Thursday barrelling into Nero’s hideaway. He’s not lying low, but ‘he goes underground’ afterwards, as Thursday sneers. Nero’s not eager to rekindle any bad feelings between the irate DCI and himself, as he makes obvious by singing like a canary after Thursday grabs him by the shirtfront and slams him into the nearest wall. An action which would have earned him Morse’s icy disapproval and fiery reproaches earlier, but which doesn’t make him bat an eye when he witnesses it now.

At the end of that day, the fifth since Joan bade goodbye to her parents before driving to work, both men find themselves nursing their scotches in Thursday’s office in heavy silence, until Morse makes an abrupt movement that draws Thursday’s red-rimmed glare.

Thursday gives him a sharp warning with his eyes. ‘No, you don’t.’

‘Who told you that I’m thinking of taking the case? It can’t go on like this.’

‘You can’t and that’s it.’

‘The hell I can’t! I’m not going to sit on my hands and wait for Strange to—’

His lips a thin line, Morse considers his glass, then flings it brusquely, alcohol and all, across the room. It shatters partially onto the opposite wall then rebounds onto the floor, leaving shards and a new stain against the paint before a thin rivulet begins to slide towards the floor.

‘Sorry, sir,’ he says in a toneless voice.

‘You’re not.’

‘No.’ Morse tugs on his ear, then folds his arms defensively before him. Thursday’s intent look forces him to lower his gaze to the table top. His hand goes back to his face, his thumb rubbing onto his lips in a parody of juvenile discomfiture.

There’s quite a long pause. Then Thursday says neutrally, ‘No use crying over spilled milk, lad. It’d have made no difference.’

Morse doesn’t react, his gaze now focusing on the stain on the floor, so Thursday gets up heavily. ‘Best get some kip. You won’t be of any use to Joan otherwise.’

Without waiting for an answer, he strides over the mess, and picks up his coat and hat. As he’s about to leave the room, at the very threshold, he turns and says, ‘Go home and sleep it off.’

But Morse doesn’t sleep. When he finally comes home, he mind-numbingly climbs the stairs to his bedroom and paces most of the night, sometimes opening the closet where Joan hung some of her clothes in anticipation of their marriage then slamming the door shut, thoughts and unsaid sentences and terrible images colliding and spinning in a contrary jarring, screeching roundabout.

  


* * *

  


On the sixth day, Mr. Bright calls a press conference. In this instance, Morse knows that it’s not only procedure, it’s an avowal of desperation. The previous paragraphs published in _The Daily Mail_ didn’t yield the expected results, so there’s no other way than fishing for public information, any information.

Mr. Bright begins in a firm voice, his hands flat on the tabletop, then raising them and punctuating the essential words, until they fold again with more strength. ‘We are launching a fresh appeal to the public to be on the lookout for Joan Thursday, who went missing on June 14, on her way to Chigton Green from Oxford, and who hasn't been seen since. Her car was found crashed into a ditch. Her handbag was left at the car crash site and she has no money or identification with her. Miss Thursday was last seen wearing a beige skirt, pale green blouse and cream light coat.’

He takes a breath, his eyes flitting on the crowd of reporters before him. Seated in the first row, Miss Frazil is busily taking notes, her eyes inscrutable but her face grim.

‘As the days pass by, we're becoming more and more concerned for her safety and well-being. Thorough search and inquiries yielded nothing, so I urge anyone who has any information about Miss Thursday’s disappearance to come forward and to contact the police. Your call will be treated with the strictest confidence and may be made anonymously.’ His voice grows stronger, more persuasive. ‘If you have any information, any at all, no matter how slight or trivial it may appear, then, please, do contact us as soon as possible.’

As soon as his voice lowers, Miss Frazil raises her hand, anticipating the traditional request for questions. ‘Miss Frazil?’

‘Is there any suggestion she might have been kidnapped? Some sort of retaliation or—’

Before she can complete the sentence, Mr. Bright goes on with an unaccustomed rudeness, ‘It’s a possibility we cannot dismiss. As yet, there's no indication that such is the case.’

At his side, Thursday tenses and Morse, standing near the door and observing Dorothea’s taut shoulders and the mirroring anxiety of his Governor, wonders which of them will get the upper hand, paternal love or friendship, in that battle of care. As for his own feelings, he has locked them into a vault and thrown away the key. He won’t go back to the place until it’s all over. One way or the other.

‘How’s the family?’ another reporter cuts in.

‘Well, as you can imagine, they're quite worried,’ replies Mr. Bright, taking care not to mention that the anxious father is sitting at the same table, on the other side of Strange’s outwardly mild presence. Nonetheless, he casts a quick look at Morse, intercepted by the latter. Both faces recover their official blandness as soon as their eyes meet.

Morse’s hands lock defensively behind his back and he feels the knuckles brush the wall when he straightens his shoulders.

‘ _It’s a waste of time_ ,’ he thinks, as a betraying flash of torment and despair crosses his face. ‘ _Nothing can come out from this. Asinine questions, official answers_.’

Nothing that myriad similar cases around the country haven’t prompted before.

None of the answers he seeks are in this room; only cutting uncertainties.

Furtively, he slips out, the faraway voices a mere droning in his ears.

  


* * *

  


The result of this press conference is threefold.

Joan’s photograph taken by Claudine adorns the front page of every local paper. Her tie to the Mozart _Requiem_ Affair adds spice to a sad, common situation, and the reporters are busy exploiting it. Again, speculation is rife and devoid of any common sense. Every line accompanying the black and white picture milks the situation to the utmost.

If Claudine were still in Oxford, she’d be proud of the assessments of her work. Reproduced on cheap newsprint paper, Joan’s face has taken an eerie quality, as if she were stepping down from an antique miniature portrait, and in the Thames Valley, some mothers eager to have their offspring make an eligible match look with envy at this loveliness, wishing that their own daughter could have her likeliness fixed in that way.

In a mansion closer to Oxford, a man unfolds the papers and bursts out laughing. Then he lights a match and carefully turns the paper to ashes in the fireplace of his breakfast room, congratulating himself for his foresight. None of his servants have access to papers, radio, or telly, on pain of dismissal and prosecution, so the girl’s face won’t be doing the round.

Seven days after Joan’s last documented words with a shop clerk, someone else opens his paper and sees the girl’s wide eyes staring at him in the face.

He puts his coffee cup carefully onto the mahogany desk and thinks hard.

 _He’s gone too far, this time_.

He has no choice. Now he knows what he must do. 

Whatever the cost.

For him and for knowledge.  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A [gorgeous photograph of Sara Vickers](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2335154/mediaviewer/rm2912882944) taken by Sasha Gustov inspired **Joan Thursday’s photograph**.  
>   
> ‘Paraselenic skin’: this adjective is a tribute to **Jokeperalta** ’s beautiful fic _[paraselene woman, I’m your man on the moon](http://archiveofourown.org/works/17696681)_. Besides, it’s such a lovely way to describe Joan!  
>   
> I’m hugely indebted to the _[Guidance on the Management, Recording and Investigation of Missing Persons](http://library.college.police.uk/docs/acpo/Missing-Persons-2005-ACPO-Guidance.pdf)_ (2005) for the **police investigation** described in this chapter.  
>   
>  **Comments? Questions? I’d LOVE to hear from you!**  
>   
>  **NEXT: In which our Heroine can't quite grasp the conversation.**


	9. Se mi salvo da questa tempesta

_Se mi salvo da questa tempesta,_  
_Più non avvi naufragio per me._  
If I survive this tempest,  
I won't be shipwrecked ever again.  
(Mozart, _The Marriage of Figaro_ , Act II, _Finale_.)

  
  


Weirdly enough, when Joan begins to emerge from her woolly world, the first concern flitting through the mist isn’t her present whereabouts, but the russet tabby cat’s which usually demands insistently its tuna treat when she’s at Morse’s house. His sleek silhouette prowls into her consciousness with that aloof imperiousness that often reminds her of Morse. Not that Endeavour considers her as his personal servant as the furry beast does, while Captain Cook—as she christened it because of its permanent hunger—considers her merely for the meals she provides for Its Imperiousness...

Gradually, the feline presence dispels from her mind, as the second impression striking her lowered eyelids is a feeling of wrongness, of—pink.

Joan’s eyes snap open and she stares at her surroundings with flabbergasted confusion, before raising herself with a slow, hesitant movement on a fluffy canopied bed.

The large room around her is—bright pink. 

_Pink_ , not rose-tinted.

Bright pink, tea pink, dark pink, old windows rose. The colour sample would put an ironmonger’s to shame. All the available pink shades—barely relieved by some dashes of white and gold—, on every surface, be it fabrics, wood, marble or paint.

The large room is like nothing she’s ever… slept in before. Gilded bronze holding the drapes at the wide widows. Portraits of severe men and frivolous ladies— _antiques?_ —enclosed in frames gilded in fine gold. Floors covered with rugs woven with— _what else?_ —giant pink floral patterns. The whole place is a blend of tasteless opulence and sickly-sweet sweetness gone overboard with _pink_. That overwhelming theme is so sugary that, for a moment, Joan wonders if the weird taste lingering at the back of her throat didn’t contaminate her eyesight.

A quick glance around, and she ascertains that she’s alone in the bedroom. Swinging her legs down to the floor, Joan takes a shaky step, then another, and a third, towards the door.

She shakes the handle. Hard. Without surprise, it’s locked up.

The second door at the end of the room leads to a richly furnished bathroom—marble, this time. Pink marble with darker veins. She splashes some cold water on her face and feels much better after drinking some.

The third door opens into a dressing room with a walk-in closet, the size of Morse’s entire den. Joan has nothing to gain by exploring the enclosed space, so she heads to the nearest window and peers through it.

From the slope where the house is situated, the view from the large widow discloses two volleys of steps leading to terraces, and red and green flowerbeds surrounding a fountain with statues almost drowned by sprays of water; all very posh and opulent. Rows of box trees punctuate the scenery, a reminder of the greenery on the horizon, delicate and misty jade-coloured at the end of a wide lawn flanked by a copse. Exquisitely lit by a sun still high in the sky, these shades of green gradually blurring until they reach the horizon need only a painter to work on that almost ideal landscape.

Whoever owns the place, he has a packet.

There isn’t a soul in sight. From the turrets and whatnot Joan can see from her vantage point, the place looks like Sleeping Beauty’s castle, until she hears a key turning into the lock. 

Instinctively, her spine attempts to liquefy into the wall, her flesh to change into tapestry-covered stone, her heart beating so hard against her ribcage that she’s almost afraid that it will escape its confine.

But the figure looming in the doorway isn’t menacing. On the contrary. It’s a plump, old woman who looks more like the proverbial Granny than an immediate threat. She wears a black dress and her head is covered with a headpiece as starched as the white apron covering her modest attire. Prim and proper, she could step out of any picture book depicting life in mansions of old, but there’s something… off that Joan cannot put her finger on. The woman is too old to be a maid, for one, but that’s not the truly disturbing thing. There’s something else. Her expression, maybe?

‘Are you awake, dear?’ the woman asks tentatively, passing the threshold; then, retreating hastily, she peers as hesitantly behind the door leaf.

Reaching a decision, she pushes it wider, and takes a step inside the room, focusing at the curtains, partially drawn around the bed. Joan’s breath is stuck in her throat and only a croak leaves it.

‘Miss?’ the woman hails again. ‘Are you awake?’

‘Yes,’ Joan finally says out loud. There’s no point in denying it when it would take two steps further, and the woman would find Joan half-hidden behind the heavy curtains. With a sigh, Joan turns from the lovely view and leaves her hideout, walking towards the newcomer with as much poise as she can.

The older woman brightens, little crinkles spreading around her mouth as she beams, and she asks with a lilt in her voice, ‘Do you want some tea brought to you, miss…err, Signora?’

_Signora?_

Joan has barely the time to wonder at this weird naming, as the woman turns away and instructs an unseen person outside the door, ‘Do bring tea.’

Still gobsmacked, Joan reaches the small round table near the windows and sits down before it. After a few minutes, a liveried, impassive servant places tea and all sorts of finger sandwiches before her and retreats. Bemused, Joan watches the woman serving her, without daring to move.

‘Don’t you want to sit down?’ she asks when the woman has filled her cup and her plate.

‘Oh, no, my dear! It wouldn’t be proper,’ the woman simpers, adding with a wide smile, ‘but I thank you for the thought.’

Seeing the warm liquid does something weird to Joan’s throat; it seems suddenly parched, so she takes a hasty gulp, not caring if it has been doctored or not. As the thought flitters through her mind, she almost feels like shrugging. The situation feels surreal. She’s not a heroine like Mrs. Peel. She’s dreaming, she’s going to wake up, and tomorrow, she’ll visit Morse and battle with him until he sees reason at last.

But the tea almost scalds her tongue, and the clanging of the cup against the saucer is loud enough to dispel her dream—which is stark reality.

‘Where am I?’ Joan asks at last, pushing her plate farther on the table despite its tantalizing content. ‘Why am I here?’

‘Don’t you know?’ the woman counters.

‘No. I wouldn’t ask if I knew,’ Joan says composedly.

For the first time, her answer shakes the woman out of her solicitousness. ‘Oh dear! He said you would—that you might not have forgotten…’

Her hands twist the lace napkin closest to her, and she puts it back on the tray, blushing a little. ‘Miss—I mean, Signora…’ Joan raises an inquiring eyebrow at her. ‘Oh dear! I must remember to call you “Signora,” he rather insisted on it…’ 

‘Signora?’

But Joan’s query receives no answer, merely a prompting closer to a request. ‘He said that you might not remember…’ Suddenly the woman reaches a decision, taking Joan by the arm. ‘Come, come... You’ll find whatever you need in the bathroom.’

‘What do I need?’ Joan enquires in vain.

But the woman merely leads her to the tub and Joan, glad to refresh herself, makes ample use of the opportunity, double-checking the lock before disrobing and taking a quick shower.

When she emerges out of the bathroom, the woman is still there, patiently standing. She casts a look at Joan’s now wrinkled clothing and bleats a cry of dismay, ‘You can’t keep those, Signora! Look, you have the choice!’

The woman opens the connecting door to the bedroom. The walk-in closet is filled from floor to ceiling with clothes arranged on coat-hangers. The mysterious Lord of the manor must have robbed at least three or four theatre companies to put his hands on so many theatrical costumes, Joan speculates disparagingly.

The woman leads her to a row of dresses and begins to move hangers around. ‘With your colouring, pink—’

‘Anything but pink,’ Joan cuts in decisively. She won’t face whatever she has to face dressed like the lady on Gidbury's chocolate bonbons box.

‘As you wish.’ With deft gestures, the woman takes a dress off its hanger, then picks up assorted accessories. She doesn’t point a gun at Joan for her to put it on, but Joan knows she doesn’t really have the choice. 

So she complies.

There’s no rabbit falling down a hole in the ground, but as the fabric falls over her head and hugs her body, she feels increasingly dissociated from her real self, as if she were another Alice spinning towards the ground in an endless, deadly somersault.

  


* * *

  


‘You look lovely, Signora,’ the woman tells Joan, and she sees in her eyes that it’s true. The woman takes a step back to observe her handiwork and kneels to adjust a flounce in the wide corolla of the full skirt.

When Joan looks at her reflection, trying to still the small tremors that shake her, she reluctantly shares her maid’s opinion. Despite her lack of imposing height, the close-bodied gown laced close to her bust maintains its antiquated elegance. The fullness of the long skirt reveals a petticoat of stark whiteness under the pale green and white stripes of the bodice and redingote skirt. The lace frills at her sleeves and throat seem genuine, as does the pearl necklace clasped around her neck.

Joan’s hairstyle alone is sadly out of fashion—1780s fashion, that is. Her unpowdered locks are brushed from her brow and held back with a ribbon in the same pistachio colour, like the slippers she’s wearing.

Slippers slightly too large for her feet. As Joan takes an experimental step forward, she feels her feet slip inside the satin shoes, and fears that she’ll stumble if she takes another one.

‘Takes some time getting used to it,’ her dresser comments in a common sense voice, as if she were breaking character.

‘Uh?’ Joan says, following her train of thought. If she tries to go down the stairs in that get-up, it’s a ten-to-one chance that she’ll slip and end up sprawled at the foot of the stairs in an undignified heap. ‘Give me back my shoes, will you?’ she commands as she kicks up the offending slippers. ‘Won’t see them under that hem.’

Granny Loony swallows a smile and obeys her order willingly enough.

As soon as Joan slips her own shoes on, a modicum of fortitude comes back with them. ‘ _The power of the familiar, without a doubt_ ,’ she thinks as she moves around the room, trying to get used to the constricting clothes, her every gesture heralded by an unwelcome rustle as well as a whiff of moth repellent.

Fortunately, the woman didn’t tie the laces as tightly as fashion decreed at the time. If she had, Joan wouldn’t be able to move at all with all these stays. As for picking up her skirt and petticoat layers and going for a 100-yard run, forget it!

‘Who’s my host?’ Joan asks again with asperity, without any hope of receiving an answer.

But this time, her curiosity is satisfied.

‘Don’t you know me, m’dear?’ a male voice, encumbered with an accent she cannot place, asks behind her back.

Joan whirls around and stands rooted where she is, her mouth agape.

  


* * *

  


The man isn’t wearing a wig—his short hair is powdered with a white, somehow shiny stuff that catches the light—and his dress is perfectly modern. Dark suit, red tie, shoes without the hint of a buckle. Yet the Texas millionaire heads for her in a surprising light step and takes Joan’s hand to kiss it as if they both were greeting each other in Queen Marie-Antoinette’s boudoir.

‘Mr. Incledon!’ Joan exclaims. She wants to continue with ‘ _What is the meaning of this?_ ’ but she can only stammer, ‘Wh-hat?’ and falls silent.

‘Signora,’ repeats Incledon over her hand. 

Joan snatches it away and takes a good step backward, managing not to step over the longer hem. ‘Where am I? Have you lost the plot?’ 

‘Now, don’t fly up into the boughs1! I—’

‘What?’ Joan cries out, her cheek covered with angry patches of red sitting ill with all the surrounding pinkness. _What’s this gibberish?_ ‘Are you off your head? I _demand_ to go back to Oxford!’

‘All in good time, m’dear,’ Incledon repeats with a smile broadcasting his intent not to pay attention to any of Joan’s outbursts. ‘Once you understand what is due to our consequences—’ 

It is fated that her host won’t be able to finish any of his sentences as Joan cuts in again, ‘I don’t give a fig about your consequence! I want out!’ And, taking a deep breath, the sentence she was fishing for comes through with explosive neatness, ‘What’s the meaning of this?’

Incledon and the woman exchange a sorrowful look which infuriates Joan further. The last time anyone considered her with such overt pity was at nursery school when she refused to stick wooden cubes into slots because she was bored out of her mind.

‘She doesn’t understand at all,’ the woman admits, while Incledon breaths an admiring sigh, ‘Still, she’s a diamond of the first water2…’

Suddenly, it’s too much. All of it. _Her cup runneth over_. 

Her fight with Morse. Incledon speaking gibberish in a weird posh accent with an American nasal undertone. Her kidnapping. This ridiculous, cumbersome dress. This abso-bloody-lutely _disgusting_ pink.

She must act, whether it’s to run foolishly away, to scream her head off or to smash something. _Running and screaming would avail her nothing. Smashing something would relieve her nerves_. Joan seizes the tea pot, but before she can please herself, a surprising firm grip makes her fingers relax their hold one by one and the precious china returns unharmed onto the table.

‘Now, now, Signora, I wouldn’t do that! A little blue-devilled3, ain’t you? That’s to be expected after such a turn as you had…’

Taking Joan’s elbow, Incledon leads her irresistibly out of the bedroom, with such a persuasive strength that she can’t resist the impetus. He opens the massive door decorated with mouldings with a careless push, and they surge upon a landing.

The bloody place is even more oppressive outside the room. There are festoons everywhere, flowers, grapes, fruits, carved at the top of decorative pillars. Dark wood, old with age or carefully painted in red, gold, and dark green. Farther to the right, at the end of an endless corridor, Joan sees closed doors, and she wonders if they are all alone in this monstrous house, she, and the woman whose name she still doesn’t know and Incledon, and the host of servants necessary to clean this cavernous place.

Incledon catches her dismay and admits, with some regret, ‘No time to refresh it all,’ and Joan understands that this part of the mansion, at least, didn’t fall prey to Incledon’s liking for pink.

Joan’s hand has barely the time to brush the elaborately carved balustrade of the staircase when they reach the ground floor. Without a pause, Incledon strides into a series of reception rooms, big draughty salons done in immaculate white and golden friezes, marble floors echoing under their hurried steps.

Right now, the master of the house doesn’t seem eager to have his abode admired by his reluctant guest. As he speeds through the doors in a tornado-like irrepressible advance, Joan glimpses shapes retreating as to leave them alone; but the servants that she perceives from the corner of her eyes are tight-lipped and blank-faced, and she may expect no help from those quarters. There’s almost a slithering rustle as the men hasten out of sigh.

At last, they reach a corner of the house even more shrouded in silence. If the old woman was annoying with her forced cheerfulness, now Joan dearly wishes for her presence. Feebly, she ventures a protesting ‘And, err… Mrs.—err… shouldn’t we wait for her?’

‘Mrs. Mara?’ Surprise slackens Incledon’s pace but he rallies fast, letting out a laugh. ‘She doesn’t need—Ah, here we are!’

Quickly and purposefully, he takes a bunch of keys out of his pocket. A few twists and turns, some clanging, and Joan finds herself in a room secured like a vault. Triumphally, Incledon switches the light on. ‘And _voila_!’

‘Err…lovely room,’ Joan comments, but she’s really answering with no more than one slim layer of consciousness. Nothing seems entirely real to her, either the man standing in front of her or her surroundings. She feels like an actress thrown onto the stage with no inkling of the part she’s supposed to read.

For a second, his face falls, and then Incledon pushes Joan towards a portion of wall decorated with some portraits. Women in clothing of approximately the same period she’s wearing—if she’s remembering her History lessons and outings at the cinema correctly—and a few men, also.

With some impatience, he points to a portrait.

‘Nice hat,’ Joan comments in a dry voice.

‘Don’t try to bamboozle4 me!’ he bursts out. ‘Got nothing else to say?’ Abruptly, the veneer of weird speech slips out and underneath, Joan sees an uglier, rougher voice trying to burst through. A voice full of contempt for her stupidity, a voice spelling disaster if she doesn’t give the right answer.

Her mind is a blank, like the thick walls surrounding her. Her eyes flit between Incledon’s face quivering with irritation and the engraved face of the young woman partly shadowed by a straw hat covered in blooms. Incledon seems poised for something, clearly expecting a reaction, something intelligible from her. But Joan cannot give it to him; she doesn’t even understand what it’s all about.

She must think fast. A glimpse at her host’s slowly reddening face tells her that she has to say something, _anything_. This is the face of a man expecting something so eagerly that he’ll be brought to sad extremes if he doesn’t get what he wants.

And what he wants, clearly, he’s used to get, as Joan’s presence attests.

Desperately, Joan takes another look at the engraving. Under the portrait, cursive writing adds up to two words. A caption? It says…

‘ _Signora Storace_ ’ Joan reads aloud.

‘Sto- _ray_ -che,’ Incledon hisses, correcting her pronunciation.

Joan bites her lips. ‘Sorry!’ 

‘Can’t you even remember how to say your own name?’

_Your own…name?_ The bloke’s definitively off his rocker.

A thin rivulet of cold sweat finds a path between Joan’s shoulder blades. Fortunately, the man doesn’t pay attention to her discomfort.

His little eyes raptly go between the flesh-and-bones woman and her so-called portrait, and, as if his willpower was forcing itself onto her common sense, Joan begins to see a bizarre likeness between the girl depicted by dry-point and her own face; the most striking one being the wide eyes, the slant of eyebrows and a nose having no intention of resembling a Grecian-shaped one.

‘I knew you as soon as I set eyes on you…’

‘At the press conference?’ she can’t help asking.

_She was right to find something amiss, that wrongness emanating from him as he bowed over her hand_.

‘No, m’dear. Before, weeks before.’

The smile stretching across his face isn’t pleasant. It reminds Joan of a snake. If snakes could smile.

‘Weeks?’

Incledon pays no attention to her interruption. He positions Joan’s head in the same angle as the sitter, and sighs in satisfaction when the mirror image obeys his wishes. ‘Hmm. Weeks, yeah. Leave off this Friday-face5 and gimme a smile!’ 

Her lips contort in the semblance of one.

He takes a step back. Joan dares barely breathe.

‘I knew then that you’d be returned to me, that you’d be the one giving it back to me—’

_What’s he talking about?_ Her shaky breathing suddenly explodes in her own ears; it’s too loud, the sound will distract him. 

Joan’s hands raise and fell back again before she places them over her heart, compressing it. The next few minutes will be momentous, she knows it. Therefore, she holds her peace and prays that his outpouring will give her the key of the mystery.

‘—but I made a mull of it6. That man—Morse—awake on every suit7 …’ Fury distorts his face before it regains its polite blandness, more threatening than any explosion of rage. ‘I had to bid my time.’

‘Your time?’ 

Her manifestation of interest pleases him, she can see it. It’s with a warmer voice that he goes on, ‘Waiting to get it back… then, when it went back to Vienna, I knew that I had to get you back, Signora. Knowing that my Muse would guide me to finish my Magnum Opus, my _Requiem_ —’

All the oxygen in the room isn’t enough to fill Joan’s lungs. She feels dizzy and nauseated when Incledon’s faraway voice finishes his sentence.

‘—I, Wolfgang Gottlieb Mozart.’

  


* * *

  


_Mozart?_

The idea is so ludicrous that Joan nearly bursts out laughing. Fortunately, an instinctive sense of self-preservation holds her back and her laughter without mirth expires in her throat before being even born.

The man standing in front of her preening his ego like a swollen peacock goes on, focused on his triumphal dispatch. ‘Blindsided them, the cops.’ He casts a quick, inquisitive look at her and Joan tries to look disinterested.

Mollified, the irritating voice explains further, switching from Texas twang to artificial sounding inflections which Joan cannot place despite their irritating familiarity.

‘Told them Banbury stories8 and they swallowed’em up. All of them, even the tightish clever one buzzing round me like a hornet.’

His fist claps loudly in the palm of his other hand and it’s as if he had smashed Morse’s brains along with it. Joan wipes unobtrusively her sweating hands over the folds of her skirt, an alarmed look on her face.

Incledon mistakes it, and puts a placating hand over her arm. Joan stiffens at the touch, trying not to let him see how much it repels her. 

‘No fear!’ His hand pats her arm insistently and she gives him a wan smile.

‘Did they?’ she manages, because she has to say something to get his disclosures rolling.

‘It was a nose-length away from them and they never suspected it!’ He lets go of a laugh sounding like a bark, his hand suddenly clasping her arm in an iron grip. 

He leads her towards the bookshelves at the end of the room. In it, rows and rows of leather covered books whose gold-incrusted titles are difficult to read on the spines. Each one must cost a mint.

Incledon stands on tiptoe and takes out an oblong book. No, not a book, a score bound in ornate leather, with gold letters on the front. _The Haunted Tower_ , Joan reads on the title page. 

Without hesitation, Incledon places it onto a nearby knee hole desk and opens it. The folio almost part on its own; there is an envelope stuck between the pages.

_Figures! A nutter, a score about ghosts, and now_ —

Now, Joan’s breath stops for a second and she must clutch at the nearest shelf to regain her equilibrium.

Because the slip of paper lying in Incledon’s hand is familiar. Very familiar indeed, even if from a photograph.

It’s Mozart’s missing ‘ _Quam olim d: c:_ ’

The other one. The one Mozart supposedly wrote last before he died.

‘But—how?’ Joan stammers.

‘Truth to tell, I was brought to point-non-plus9 before I cocked up my toes10, but I… recovered. In more ways than one.’ Incledon smirks. ‘Full of juice11, now.’ His demonstrative gesture encompasses all the contents of the room and beyond it, his private domain.

His intent gaze comes to rest back on the priceless bit of score. ‘Purloined letter, you see? Hidden in plain sight.’ And his tone makes clear that he enjoys the irony tremendously. The most valuable part of his collection isn’t even stored in the additional vault inserted in the nearby wall.

Joan’s brain almost blanks out. Incledon’s filthy rich, that’s right, but how did he get in touch with the right—or rather, the wrong—people? 

That’s a query for another time, as he discloses, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, ‘Of course, I never meant to let the other one go for long. Emery’s mutton-headed12. Also needed it, you know.’ He chuckles again, and as before, the sound makes Joan’s skin crawl.

‘Touch it!’ he commands, and slowly, hesitantly, Joan puts the tip of her index finger in the margin, away from the strokes of brown ink.

‘Not like that!’ 

Incledon takes her finger firmly between his and places the tip onto a flourish, where a curvaceous ‘ _d_ ’ bloats over the page like an inverted ‘6.’

‘Feel it?’

_Feel what?_ Joan feels nothing but thick paper beneath her skin, but nods in agreement nonetheless. ‘Indulge the lunatic’ seems to be the order of the day. She just doesn’t want to guess how far she’ll have to indulge him, and as that repressed idea bursts out of confinement, she feels queasy.

Incledon maintains her finger in position for a few more seconds, and finally relents, releasing it. Joan flexes her finger mechanically, restoring circulation into it.

‘The power,’ he muses aloud. ‘The power to finish it. My last ideas stored into this, y’know. Constanze threw away my drafts, y’see!’ Another flash of wrath distorts his face, and before that demonic appearance, it takes all of Joan’s inner strength not to dart away from him. ‘Never should have married the shrew!’ His gaze softens suddenly as he details Joan’s face. ‘Not like you, Signora. Always knew we were made for each other!’

Joan cannot repress a jerk. Hot and cold waves run through her, their alternance going faster, from scorching to chilling.

With a smile meant to be charming, Incledon takes a step towards her, taking her hands in his. ‘Not to worry, m’dear. This time, I mean to do right by you. Offering you a carte-blanche13? Not Wolfgang Mozart! I mean to become a become a tenant for life14!’

His grip is so firm that Joan can’t even move her fingers. She feels the blood congealing in the tip of her fingers as he bows over her hands, kissing them with wet sloppy kisses.

  


* * *

  


The rest of the day is as nightmarish. Incledon sticks like a leech. Joan can’t breathe on her own. If he’s not two steps away, the irritating old woman acts like a lady-in-waiting… or a prison officer.

It’s not enough that Joan’s got to eat in Incledon’s company, but he leads her through a tour of the floors, playing the perfect host, pointing out every possession of note, be it paintings, biscuit porcelain figurines or gilded statues, specifying their worth. Joan produces _oooh_ s and _ahhh_ s at appropriate intervals and tries not to show her irritation during this dull as dishwater tour, while searching for escape routes. She sees none.

The mansion seems to be situated in a large park, the faint shiny outlines of a lake or a stream down below, the only rupture in that green monotony. But sailing her way to the other shore doesn’t seem to be an option; there’s no boat that she can see. And no horses left in the eighteenth-century style stables erected near the main house. Anyway, she can’t ride, and even if she did know how, she couldn’t, not with this ridiculous dress!

Incledon, delighted by her apparent compliance, grows even more expansive and chattier, but there’s nothing that Joan can get in additional information, and particularly not her present location or who exactly she’s supposed to be in his distorted view. Italian, probably, but it’s no help knowing that.

When they come to a magnificent library, filled from floor to ceiling with volumes, Joan sees an opening at last, and for the first times in an hour, her feet don’t drag after Incledon’s steps. A grin breaks over her face, not contrived, for once.

‘Where are you keeping the books about me?’ Joan asks lightly, as if having several written about this unknown Signora were the more normal thing in the world.

For a second, Incledon’s face grows triumphant, then it subsides into false modesty. ‘They forgot about you, but I didn’t.’ He crosses the room, and takes out a book from a shelf. Between his fingers, Joan reads the author’s name on the spine, A. Einstein. 

_Albert Einstein wrote a book on the Signora?_ Now she gets it even less.

Joan has a look around as he turns the pages, then finds the passage he was looking for.

Books upon books upon books align on the shelves. Words and sentences and ideas from dead writers about dead people, one of which weighs heavily on her life.

Unexpectedly, the library seems oppressive, containing endless chatter pressing portentously upon her future. _Is that what Endeavour finds in books?_ Conversation between the living and the dead? Fortitude, warnings, advice, point of views, ideas, things long past consoling a gloomy future? The kind of conversation he can’t seem to have with any living soul? As far as she’s concerned, she doesn’t need it. Real people are enough of a delight to her.

Joan’s hovering over an epiphany of sorts when Incledon holds forth the book, frowning slightly at her inattention. Her eyes lower onto the page and she reads with growing stupefaction about an aria that Mozart composed for Anna Selina Storace, ‘ _an accompanied duet for voice and clavier, a declaration of love in music, the transfiguration of a relation that could not be realised except in this ideal sphere_.’ And it suddenly dawns on her after browsing a few pages, that Signora Storace sang Susanna the maid, in the premiere of _The Marriage of Figaro_. Finally, one reference Joan recognises with no small relief! But she’s none the wiser. The woman—the girl—is a hazy silhouette at best.

_So, Mozart wrote some music for the Signora and it’s enough evidence for his feelings? What does it have to do with her, Joan?_ Then Joan pales, remembering Incledon’s fixation. He’s Mozart, and she’s supposed to be this Anna Storace. And if he wants to follow up the fantasy till its logical outcome…

A wave of disgust so strong it makes her wants to puke engulfs her. What she needs, right now, is to take Incledon’s mind off his obsession for a while.

Her lips drawn in a tight line, Joan closes the book decisively and hands it back to him, noting its place upon the shelf. If she needs some more insight, she’ll have to find a way to pinch it. After all, she can’t perform a role while being in the dark. The only stuff she knows about Mozart has no connexion with Incledon’s delirium: the boy genius touring Europe, his early death, and the _Requiem_. She never ever heard of the Signora before, and she merely has a passing knowledge of _The Marriage of Figaro_ from listening to it while scraping wallpaper off, plastering and painting. Enchanting music, but something that will probably never come naturally for a first choice of listening.

Right now, Incledon mustn’t dwell on his obsession too much.

‘I need a breath of fresh air,’ Joan says with the determined look she imagines proper for an opera diva. ‘Bit stuffy in here, isn’t it?’

‘Dust bad for your throat?’ Incledon replies, and Joan swallows a dismayed gasp. Surely, he doesn’t imagine she’s about to— _sing_? Gosh, another pitfall she never thought of.

‘Yeah, it is.’ Stepping into the breach, she even tries an unconvincing—to her ears—cough, but it’s sufficiently persuasive for her companion to lead the way out, then through a French window, into the garden.

Up close, the statues in the central fountain are sea horses and Tritons blowing their horns. The fresh air is invigorating after all the airless rooms, overflowing with furniture and valuable baubles. Joan breathes deeply in and out, regretting that the tightly-laced dress constricts her so, until Incledon intimates returning to the mansion should be wiser.

Joan has no choice than to do so. With a look of longing towards the green expanse of lawn and the road that winds through the slope, towards the horizon, she ambles back into her prison.

  


* * *

  


It’s not before her bedtime that Joan manages to shake her creepily jocular host. Mrs. Mara is as obnoxious, keeping her company till she reaches her bedroom door.

With an internal sigh, Joan closes the door, shaking with the need to slam it, before dragging the tea table in front of it for good measure and sticking a chair right below the handle—not that she hopes the flimsy thing would stop any determined going in, but the ruckus would wake her up. She can’t lock herself up, but she hopes it will be enough.

Preparing for bed doesn’t take long. There are many nightdresses to choose from, and she takes the one resembling a shroud the most: modestly buttoned up to her throat with long sleeves and long hem.

Feeling utterly exhausted, Joan hides one of her shoes under the pillows, climbs into the high curtained bed and snuggles under the covers.

Curving into a ball, she bites the nail of her thumb and thinks on what her mother told her, at the end of their conversation. ‘ _You can’t fool me, Joan. You dislike Morse tremendously right now_.’ She remembers the flash of clarity penetrating her heart—that day, her love for Endeavour warred with her exasperation for his high-mindedness. Yet, twisting and turning in the unfamiliar bed, Joan recalls how Win went on with an understanding she never thought her mother could manage, ‘ _He may be something of a twit, Joanie, but he's a terribly attractive one_.’

He is.

And Morse is also very, very clever. He’ll find her. Because he’s who he is.

He’s a clever bugger.

And he never ever leaves a leaf unturned.

With that comforting thought, Joan folds up her arms under the pillows, and sleep takes her under its wings.

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote about these bright pink walls before watching Series 7 and burst out laughing when I saw the Venice hotel room!  
>   
> A photograph of a **redingote dress** is on [Wikimedia](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/05/Woman%27s_redingote_c._1790.jpg).  
>   
>  **Incledon** peppers **eighteenth-century cant** (which novelist Georgette Heyer used in her famous Regency romances) into his speech. As the reader doesn’t have to be as befuddled as Joan was, here are some modern explanations:  
>   
> 1\. **_To fly up into the boughs_** : to lose one’s temper. Back  
>   
> 2\. _**A diamond of the first water**_ : a beautiful woman. Back  
>   
> 3\. **_Blue-devilled_** : Affected with the blue devils; depressed, melancholy, low-spirited. Back  
>   
> 4\. **_To bamboozle_** : to deceive, hoax or make a fool of a person. Back  
>   
> 5\. **_Friday-faced_** : a sad countenance. Back  
>   
> 6\. **_To make a mull of it_** : to fail or to make a muddle of something. Back  
>   
> 7\. **_Awake on every suit_** : knowing what’s going on. Back  
>   
> 8\. **_Banbury stories_** : a nonsense story told at long length. Back  
>   
> 9\. **_To be brought to point-non-plus_** : to be backed into ruin with few possibilities to recover from it. Back  
>   
> 10\. **_To cock up one’s toes_** : to die. Back  
>   
> 11\. **_Full of juice_** : to have plenty of money. Back  
>   
> 12\. **_Mutton-headed_** : stupid. Back  
>   
> 13\. **_A carte-blanche_** : protection and material advantages given to a mistress instead of marriage. Back  
>   
> 14\. **_To become a tenant for life_** : to get married. Back  
>   
> See Jennifer Kloester’s _Georgette Heyer’s Regency World_ (Sourcebook, 2010) for more.  
>   
> The **quotation regarding Signora Storace** comes from Alfred (not Albert!) Einstein’s _Mozart, His Character, His Work_. (London, 1959, Fourth Edition, page 74.)  
>   
>  ** _[The Haunted Tower](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Haunted_Towerg)_** is an opera composed by Stephen Storace, Signora Storace’s brother.  
>   
>  ** _Did you expect that twist? I’d love to know. Feedback will be gratefully accepted, and would make my day!_**  
>   
>  **NEXT: In which our Heroine finds out that being a Muse is no mean feat.**  
>   
> 


	10. Liber scriptus proferetur

_Liber scriptus proferetur_  
The written book will be brought forth  
( _Sequentia_ , Requiem Mass. Attributed to Thomas of Celano.)

  
  


Joan is a Muse.

Joan is a prisoner.

With regard to the latter, she’s quite convinced. Everything points to that.

As to the former, she keeps her mouth shut and does what she’s told. It includes sitting in a rococo armchair looking interested as Incledon composes Mozart’s _Requiem_ , photographs of the autograph score and various sketches, old and new, lying around him while he swears profusely and gulps down huge amounts of coffee.

Three days after she woke in these weird surroundings, Joan can hardly set a foot outside of her bedroom on her own. Either a footman or Mrs. Mara are usually passing by whenever she wanders in the mansion, ostensibly to meet her needs.

But her actual needs are those they can’t satisfy. Freedom, for instance.

At least, the bedroom is still her own, and if she hears the key turn in the latch after she has retired, at least, no one has deemed necessary to… check on her in the middle of the night.

When she can shake free of Incledon, Joan has free rein of the reception rooms in the ground floor and of the library. Still, it’s no help to relieve her tedium. Search as she can, she finds no telly set, radio, or papers anywhere. The ground floor is a bizarre mix of vintage elegance, garish taste, and probable leftovers from the previous inhabitants—ghastly African trophies on the walls, hung over delicate knick-knacks, elephant tusks, or an inordinate amount of antique gilded clocks. What was the use of the place before Incledon moved in? A bordello, with these loudly painted rooms? A gambling den, as the casino chip stuck into the floorboard in the library hints?

Joan kept the chip, though, and slipped the ‘JB’ inscribed disk under her décolletage. Her new lucky token, she decided on a whim. She sorely needs one.

One particularly dreary afternoon, her aimless, restless wandering leads her in the library again—a sombre place, exuding a feeling of emptiness despite all the words stored in it.

Books she’ll never read. Books she has no interest in.

She loves a good, entertaining yarn, but there’s no way she’ll find what she craves right now. Something to take her mind off her conundrum for a while, something to rest her mind from her predicament: how to make a dash for it, how to warn the police of her situation. If there are no telly and no radio, there are no phones either. It’s as if Incledon lived in the eighteenth-century, plumbing and electricity aside.

Her shoulder rests against the doorframe for a minute before she forces herself, with a conscient effort, in the library proper. Surrounded by books as she is now, Joan suffers Endeavour’s absence even more intensely. It deepens a void inside her, the likes of which she never thought possible.

The last time they were surrounded by volumes charging the ceiling in written battalions, chapters at the ready, it was in a bookshop. She said something under her breath, and Endeavour laughed suddenly and briefly slipped his arm around her. Strange how a laugh and a fleeting, light touch should make you feel how the sky was blue and cloudless, the grass bright green and all the birds were singing their heads off.

She does miss him. Tremendously.

And she’s growing more worried about him. He must be in a proper state by now. Mum and Dad, too. Especially Mum.

Joan sniffs defiantly and brushes her hair back from her cheeks, her fingers tangling in the unusual bouncing curls that Mrs. Mara insists she wears. With the gesture, she tries to sweep away the thoughts that she usually shuts away. Knowing that they are simmering just below the surface, yet not letting herself think about them; because if she does, it might become real and terrifying, and she might freeze and let herself be mesmerised and slaughtered.

Her handbag is missing, it wasn’t with her when she woke up. _She can’t prove who she is_.

If—when—Incledon completes ‘his’ _Requiem_ , what then? Will she be of any use to him? If he can’t achieve it—and Joan is under no illusion that he can properly compose like Mozart—, will he consider that she wasn’t inspiration enough and—do away with her? 

_Nobody knows where she is._

And…what if that man wants to hear her— _singing_?

Decisively, Joan begins to browse methodically through the books, searching for some light reading or anything that might help her. After finding rows of Victorian sermons—massive tomes that no one, except their authors, must have ever had the temptation to read—and a bound collection of _Punch_ , Joan reaches the shelf containing books about classical music. There rests the Einstein volume and some other books with as unappealing contents. Yet, as she reluctantly pulls one of them off the shelf, a flash of brighter colour floods her eyes.

She extends her arm further and her fingers brush against another row of books, hidden behind the first one and pushed at the back of the shelf. The paperbacks, glossily illustrated with Regency couples in artificial poses making sheep’s eyes at each other, display titles quite different from the rest of the library: _Black Sheep, False Colours, Bath Tangle, The Reluctant Widow, A Civil Contract, The Unknown Ajax, Venetia, The Nonesuch, Sylvester, or the Wicked Uncle_ … 

‘Knock me down with a feather!’ she whispers.

They’re romance novels by Georgette Heyer!

Joan can’t help herself. She bursts out laughing, and laughs so hard that tears come to her eyes and she almost falls from the ladder, while a saner part of her mind analyses coldly her flare-up as a reaction to all the tension she’s been under lately. 

Picking a novel at random, she finds annotated, underlined dialogues, sometimes ‘translated’ in the margins. She chews her lips, her mind in turmoil.

So Incledon’s rubbish talk was prepared… Did he learn by rote all these strange, outlandish expressions? Even Jane Austen’s heroes don’t talk that way. Joan should know, _Pride & Prejudice_ is part of her Free School program, and Mr. Darcy never once spoke of ‘ _bags of moonshine_ ’1 or any such things. The supposed eighteenth-century cant coming so trippingly upon Incledon’s tongue wasn’t natural at all, but part of a wider deception.

 _But who is he trying to deceive? Himself? Joan? Poor gullible Mrs. Mara who really seems to be into this esoteric pigshit?_ She chatters increasingly about it every morning, when she helps Joan to put on this uncomfortable clothing or when fitting the fancy dresses to her measurements.

A few pages later, and laughter comes bubbling again: does Incledon see himself as a dashing fashionable hero, a ‘Pink of Fashion’2 as they said at the times? If so, the choice of pink paint might make more sense…

Swiftly, Joan hides the paperback in the large pocket sewn into her petticoat, then replaces the front books as they were. At least, it should provide some escapism for the evening.

And maybe, just maybe, some more insight into what makes Incledon tick.

  


* * *

  


As Joan, stretched onto her temporary bed, is engrossing herself in Phoebe’s spirited rows with the Duke of Salford, Morse is also immersed in his reading. But the contents of the files he’s perusing are macabre—photographs of missing young women whose bodies were discovered months later. If they ever were.

Ann Watts, 32 years old. Wendy Ashley, 21. Patricia Dall, 27. Frances Munro, 24. Emma Ferguson, 26.

They all went missing from Oxford or whereabouts, after they took their cars and drove away. To their deaths.

Nothing out of the ordinary happened before their last journey. No death threats, no vengeful spouses or boyfriends, no family quarrels, no incidents.

No pattern between the cases.

No evidence that any of them are even related and that the murderer is one and the same.

All dead in the space of two years.

Silence before, grief afterwards.

Morse browses through the pages slowly, trying again to find a link, a clue, something they missed. He blinks several times, eyes watering with exhaustion, trying to make them focus for one additional hour. Or two. Or three.

But there’s nothing there that he hasn’t seen before—meaningless words, photographs of lively, smiling young women superposed with evidence photographs. Stiffened limbs, mouths parted in grimaces, hands raised in a last protest, clawing at their transient life to halt its passing away.

He closes his eyes wearily, his over fertile imagination substituting black and white snapshots of a broken Joan, crumbled in the same poses, her unseeing wide eyes somehow filled with pain and reproach. A low moan escapes the back of his throat and he feels rather than hears an interrogative ‘Matey?’ from the other side of the room.

Morse folds almost protectively over the files, elbows on the desk and hands grasping at the curls at his nape, as if searching for balance within himself. Oxygen seeps into his lungs so slowly that the room begins to revolve around him. If he’s the sun of this new solar system, he’s a dark star, one which engulfs all life, trapping light without hope for escape.

 _Joan was pulled to him and he also refused to resist her attraction. She pays the price, now. As he does. As he will_.

‘You alright, matey?’

It’s an endeavour to raise his head and focus on Strange. He’s bending his expansive body over the desk, palm down on the tabletop, trying to put himself at Morse’s eye level.

‘Matey?’

‘Heard you the first time,’ Morse says as disagreeably as he can. ‘No need to shout.’

‘I’m not shouting.’

Strange’s eyes linger on the photograph half covered by Morse’s elbow. ‘Frances Munro, again?’

‘One never knows.’

‘Investigations gave nothing.’

Morse huffs loudly, noting that Strange looks away without reproving him for his distrust for other detectives’ work. _Pitying the poor sod?_

A wave of fury, stronger for being repressed for weeks, flows over him in an uninhibited wave. ‘Bit off their beat, weren’t they? Wouldn’t see the forest for the trees! Got to review them.’

‘A bit unfair, isn’t it? Been looking at it left, right and centre.’

‘Unfair?’ Morse’s face suddenly and briefly quivers with a bright blaze of desperation. ‘Unfair? Rather unfair to Miss Thursday not to—’

‘Bright forbade you—’

‘Oh, damn it to hell!’ 

Morse’s fist strikes the desk so hard that the keys of his typewriter clatter.

‘If you don’t mind me saying, you’re no use to Joanie right now. Go home, get something into you—food, I mean—and sleep it off.’ Strange looks pointedly at the files. ‘And don’t take them home!’

From the belligerent look Morse fires at him, his advice makes no impression whatsoever. Squaring himself in front of him, Strange adds, ‘Keep your pecker up! 3 We’ll find her.’

But he doesn’t say how or when. Or if they will in time.

‘Will you?’ Strange insists, clearly not keen to abandon Morse on his own for the evening.

‘None of your business. I’m off shift.’

‘My business, matey. The Old Man told me to keep an eye on you.’

Morse’s shoulders tense, and he deliberately goes back to his files. Strange holds his ground as stubbornly. 

A minute or so goes by.

Without raising his eyes, Morse grumbles, ‘Still here?’

‘Won’t move before you go.’

‘Suit yourself.’

Mulishly, Morse makes a show of turning the sheets, of taking some additional notes, but the silhouette firmly planted on the floor disturbs his thought process. It’s as if his mind smashed against this earthly placidity, Strange’s unending patience dispelling his nervous energy. His own fidgeting soars unheeded until it reaches his brain, all of a sudden. He breaks off with a hiss of annoyance.

It’s useless. 

_He’s useless_.

Furiously, he gathers the files in a neat stack next to his typewriter, jaw clenched and eyes flashing, before taking his coat off the rack.

‘Will you grab a bit to eat?’ Strange insists.

‘I'm not in the habit of saying things I don't mean,’ Morse snaps back so bitterly that Strange refrains to say that he has said nothing of the sort. Instead he offers as a peace preliminary, ‘Fancy a pint?’

‘Not with you!’

Without another good-bye, Morse strides towards the exit, head held high, exuding fuming disapproval.

When he’s gone, Strange lets out a sigh of relief and picks up the phone, dialling up Thursday’s number.

  


* * *

  


The beer has no taste at all, merely one that guilt flavours with tartness. _He should be at the nick; he should be looking into_ —

Mechanically, his wrist lowers the pint to his lips and the liquid slides into his throat.

Decidedly, it has no taste. He should go home.

 _Home!_ Morse snorts. _His house isn’t a home. It’ll never be a home now_.

Conversations buzz around him—words stinging like hornets, voices bothering him like flies on a hot summer day. As clingy, as niggling.

He opens his eyes in a slit, hoping that a slight blur will spare him from seeing the faces attached to the noise. One of them looks—is familiar enough that he turns slightly away with a heartfelt groan.

Miss Frazil tries to catch his eye, but he avoids it as determinately by focusing on his pint. A slight glance is enough to show that Dorothea looks a thousand years older than last week. She looks as he feels, in fact.

‘Care if I sit?’ Without waiting for his answer, she does.

He mumbles into his pint, ‘Don’t bother asking the next time.’

‘Bad day?’

‘No worse than lately.’

‘You look knackered. Had something to eat? I bet you skipped lunch again.’

‘Not hungry,’ states Morse, before downing the rest of his beer in one go and preparing to get up. 

Still seated, he gropes around at the back of his chair and finds his coat. Yet, before he has a chance to put it on, Dorothea grabs at his arm, preventing him from putting it into the sleeve.

‘You have to forgive yourself.’

‘For what?’

‘Joan missing. It isn’t your fault.’

‘Is it?’ His arm twitches furiously under her fingers and she lets go. 

‘Make peace with yourself, Morse, or it will eat you alive.’

‘At least, I’ll be alive.’ He lowers red-rimmed eyes to her. ‘Have you just got back from an Ashram? Never took you for that sort.’

‘Any news?’

‘Haven’t you had enough of gossip today?’

‘Still, any hunch?’ she says lightly. ‘For my private information.’

He doesn’t answer, and under the subdued light, his angular face takes on an almost skeletal look, his cheekbones more prominent.

Dorothea’s hand regains her former place. Under her touch, Morse’s arm is shaking slightly.

‘I forgot,’ she says in a slightly ironic tone, ‘women have hunches, detectives have insight.’

Still no vocal reaction.

She tries another tack. ‘Buy you a drink? They say misery loves company.’

‘Another time.’

He jumps to his feet. This time, she doesn’t try to detain him.

  


* * *

  


It’s been almost a fortnight, now.

Joan can’t wait forever.

She’ll have to take matters into her own hands and do it on her own. The only thing is, she has no idea where to begin.

  


* * *

  


The morning is bleak and cold when Morse slams the door of the Jag on the driver’s side. Thursday casts a quick glance at him, and closes his door gently, yet for all its restraint, the movement holds just as much vehemence. His jaw clenches, straining a lined and sallow face. To his inquisitive eyes, Morse’s pastier than he’s ever been, his dulled eyes sunken in rings growing darker by the day.

An uncontrollable quiver courses through Morse’s hunched shoulders. He buries his hands deeper into his car coat before climbing up the stairs leading to the front door of the nick, then he goes through the corridors with his long, nervous strides.

Head lowered so he doesn’t have to notice anyone, Morse misses a hand waiving in his direction. Thursday follows him in a slower pace, grumbling greetings for them both till they reach the incident room.

Decisive days went by since Joan…disappeared, and the board is still partially bare from scribbling and pictures, the photographs of her Mini stuck in the ditch unrelieved by arrows, names of possible suspects, or theories. Any theories. As Thursday looks at the black and white photographed face of his daughter, she seems to return his gaze cheekily, mocking his failure.

No one came forward, no witness, no nothing. Nearly a fortnight later, they’re not further ahead.

His lips compressing further, the DCI reaches his office, the doorframe vibrating when he closes the door behind him with more force than he exerted upon the door of the Jag.

Pointedly not looking at the board, Morse slumps into his chair before moving files somewhat aimlessly. He finally selects a slight autographs notebook, flipping mechanically through it; then, he checks as he focuses on one page, the one sporting ‘ _Stan Laurel Oliver Hardy 10 Feb 1953_.’

His brow rippling with new creases, Morse picks up his phone. ‘Hello! Can you connect me to the Peninsular and Oriental head office, please?’

A few minutes later, he unfolds his reasoning to Thursday, stringing together all the reasons pointing to Gordon as the murderer.

The evening proves him right. Yet Morse gets no satisfaction from it as he bends, desperately coughing ashes out of a sore, inflamed throat. Thursday’s arm round his waist is an anchor for his stumbling steps. In the sharp shadows of the back alley, his hand grasps at the brick wall of the burning cinema, the cool roughness a comfort after the smothering, encompassing crimson hell he just escaped from, thanks to his Governor.

When they reach the Jag, Morse doubles again in a new fit of spitting, expelling the last particles. His mouth feels furred, even worse than during a merciless hangover—he knows the feeling well. Haven’t the last days led him to rediscover it?

‘Thanks.’ His mumble is so raspy that the sound astounds him.

Thursday nods curtly in answer, shoves him into the passenger seat, and drives the car to the front façade of the Roxy. Coming closer, the siren of a fire engine fills the silence. Fire draws lacy patterns around the roof with eager fingers, projecting fiery cinders in the sky. There’s nothing they can do except waiting, so they wait, standing on the pavement, a few feet away from the shell-shocked Emil Valdemar, their faces filled with the same staggered horror, as the fiery phoenix night turns into dove-grey dawn.

No survivors, according to the fire boys.

When they drive back to the nick, it’s early morning. Grey soot and black grime stain Morse’s jacket and hair, Thursday’s hat and coat, but it’s the identical expression on their faces that strikes bystanders the most: utter exhaustion and helplessness mingling with anger.

‘Fill out your report, then off with you!’ Thursday commands.

‘Sir…’

‘For once, Morse, just do it!’

The reproof doesn’t sit well with him as his faintly rebellious expression confirms, but Morse nods and sits down heavily at his desk, pulling out a blank form.

He’s hunched over his chore, his pen running over the paper, when the sound of a clearing of a throat in front of him makes him raise his head. Morse rubs his nose wearily and snaps, ‘What now?’

DC Fancy flinches, avoiding narrowly to back down. ‘Err… There’s a Mr. Emery to see you, sir. Put him in interrogation room 2.’

Morse’s face contorts in a snarl, and this time, Fancy takes a step back.

‘Been waiting to speak to you, sir. All night long, sir. Also left a message the day before.’

With some irritation, Morse rakes a hand in his hair and takes it out sooty, which doesn’t help to improve his humour. He looks at it disgustedly, while Fancy merely looks alarmed. He’s about to turn tail and go, when Strange walks up to them.

‘Problem, matey?’

‘Emery,’ Morse says. ‘Wants to see me.’

He casts an almost yearning look at the form lying barely written in on his desk, and gets up. ‘I might as well get it over,’ he exhales.

‘Err… Bloke said it was about Miss—’ Fancy adds, with a toss of his chin in the direction of Thursday’s office.

‘Why didn’t you say so before?’ Morse almost growls. Without a glance back, he turns the corner at an almost run, his heart filling with a hope he tries to deflate as he feels it swelling.

John Emery sits in the hard chair as if he were still in his office, humming under his breath as he annotates the score spread out before him. He doesn’t look the worse for his sleepless night. His head doesn’t swivel in the direction of the entrance when the creaking of the door informs him of the presence of a newcomer. 

He takes his time to underline his markings on the margin before raising his eyes to Morse’s silhouette through the doorframe. His ‘Ah, here you are at last, my boy!’ doesn’t give away more than the mild irritation of someone whose time has been lost through some disgraceful negligence. 

‘Sir! You wanted to see me?’

‘Indeed.’ Composedly, Emery gathers the score and his notebook, and puts them away in the briefcase placed at the other side of the table. ‘Won’t you sit down? It might take a while,’ he suggests as if he were hosting the interview. The furrows in Morse’s brow deepen as he follows the suggestion, positioning himself in front of the don.

Hasty footsteps in the nearby corridor herald the arrival of two people. Strange has informed Thursday, it seems, then followed along. ‘ _Might as well_ ,’ Morse concedes inwardly. ‘ _He’s in charge of the case_.’ Both men drag a chair closer to the table and sit down, their closed faces attesting that no power in the nick would make them exit the room before they know everything Emery has to say.

The coppers watch in silence as Emery goes through his briefcase and takes out, first a copy of _The Oxford Mail_ , then a book. Heaving a sigh, he unfolds the paper until he reaches a too familiar page. Folding it again upon itself, he turns the paper until Joan’s face looks dreamily at the three men from the tabletop.

Thursday’s head snaps up so sharply that Morse hears the vertebras shift. ‘What the—’ he growls, while Morse feels his face congeal into quivering impassivity.

He puts a restraining hand on the older man’s forearm. ‘Let’s see what Dr. Emery’s leading to.’

With a furtive look at him, the don slips his finger along a bookmark and opens the hardcover. He considers it for an additional second before placing it before him, upside down, next to Joan’s black and white photograph. The open book discloses an eighteenth-century portrait of a young woman wearing a large straw hat covered with flowers.

‘Signora Storace,’ Morse says, stating the obvious. A legend beneath the reproduction explains that the British-born young opera singer was Mozart’s friend, maybe his lover.

‘I don’t suss it out,’ Strange ponders, in an utterly mystified tone.

Without paying attention to his interruption, Morse takes the paper and brings Joan’s photograph closer, until it overlaps with the engraving. He frowns, his thoughts stampeding in a mad tempo.

‘You see it, don’t you?’ Emery’s persuasive voice enters his mental space and Morse tries to shake it out with a flick of the wrist.

There’s something there. An elusive likeness centring around the eyes. But the structure of the face, the baby fat remaining on the rounded cheeks have no resemblance with Joan’s cheekbones; neither has her mobile mouth any similarity with the diva’s rose-button mouth, nor her elfin chin the same shape of Signora Storace’s fleshier one.

Breaking the spell, Morse rakes his hand violently through the curls at his nape and looks down with some surprise at the ashes flowing from his fingers to the table.

Thursday hasn’t his patience. ‘What’s this shit?’

‘A passing likeness,’ answers Morse. ‘And something else. Dr. Emery?’

Emery looks back at him with all the disappointment of a teacher whose favourite student falls short in his answer. ‘Something else, yes. I told you, this might take a while.’

‘I’ve nothing more pressing to do,’ asserts Thursday who sits back in his uncomfortable chair, a look of suffering expectation etched on every lines of his body.

‘It began six months ago. At Sanders’. I browsed through their…sales.’ The word issues forth with reluctance, as if going through the second-hand offering of one of the most renowned antique bookshops in Oxford was a shame Emery would never recover from. ‘I bought the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ you saw on my desk. The binding was sorely damaged and it was a real bargain.’

Morse nods. ‘The one containing the report about Haydn in Oxford.’

‘The same. At soon as I turned the pages, the binding came unstuck. And I noticed that there was a lined piece of paper hidden beneath the book board, instead of cardboard. Something that looked like semiquavers, too.’ His voice shakes with a reminiscence holding as much awe as excitement. ‘Took a long time but I got it free without damaging it. I had to break up the cover to get to it, but it was worth my while.’

He swallows audibly. ‘Actually, there were two pieces of paper folded upon themselves several times. One of them was a letter. The second was—’ He reaches for his briefcase again. This time, he takes out a folder which reveals a flat bundle. Carefully, he unwraps the acid-free paper from an oblong page with several folding lines.

No, not a page, Morse realises; a score. He extends his hand towards it, turns it around. It’s more sketch than final scoring, as it seems to leave off after a few bars. Peering more closely at it, he notices that various themes are written down on both recto and verso, the following folio torn off, as an irregular side of the sheet of paper shows.

Despite himself, Morse focuses on the notes. _A fugue?_

‘It is,’ Emery says, and at his confirmation, Morse understands that he spoke it out loud. ‘But not any fugue. And not any copyist.’

‘Trusler?’ Strange ventures. At least, he’s not losing sight of the case he couldn’t put a fitting end to.

‘Trusler enters into it, Sergeant, but not as the author of _this_ ,’ Emery specifies with an odd emphasis on the pronoun. Seeing that he can’t bewilder an indifferent audience, he finally states in a flat tone. ‘Haydn wrote it down, but he didn’t compose it. Not entirely.’

Again, he pauses, expecting questions, rebuttals, anything. But all he gets is Thursday’s thunderous glare, Strange’s uncomprehending one and Morse’s fingers tapping lightly on the tabletop.

‘Those are sketches for Mozart’s _Requiem_ in Haydn’s handwriting.’

Emery’s admission would probably cause an uproar in a room full of musicologists, but here and now, in a coldly lit interrogation room, only polite silence welcomes it, even if Morse’s mouth twitches for the merest of seconds.

Strange’s uninterested look finally prompts an outburst from the don. ‘Come on, man! It’s the biggest discovery since—’

‘—the Lava lamp?’ Thursday cuts in. ‘You’re aware there’s an offence of wasting police time?’

His matter-of-fact tone deflates Emery’s enthusiasm immediately. ‘I imagine, gentlemen, that this might not interest you, however—’

‘Are those sketches new themes?’

Seeing that he has at least one interested listener, the musicologist turns to the former college boy. ‘No, lad. Some are Mozart’s. The others might be Haydn’s continuation or even more copies from Mozart’s lost drafts. The _Amen_ fugue…’

‘“ _Quam olim da capo_ ”,’ Morse quotes thoughtfully.

‘Exactly.’ Suddenly, all triumph leaves Emery’s voice. ‘The letter was something else entirely. Written in German, it was a letter from _Frau_ Mozart asking Haydn, as a friend of her late husband, for help to complete the _Requiem_.’ He looks at his hands as if surprised that they twist and grasp tightly at the edge of the table without his knowledge. ‘Haydn was in London at the time, kept busy with concerts and entertained by admirers and music lovers. Obviously, he began to jot down ideas, then couldn’t go on. Constanze Mozart turned to Eybler, then to Süssmayr.’

‘And the rest is music history,’ Morse says deprecatingly, before asking the questions gnawing at each copper’s lips. ‘What’s this to do with Miss Thursday?’

‘Everything, probably.’

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let it be known that the Author doesn’t share Joan’s slight disdain for **Georgette Heyer’s novels**. Their mention is meant as a tribute for a very popular novelist and a fine writer.  
>   
> 1\. **_A bag of moonshine_** : nonsense. Back  
>   
> 2\. _**Pink of Fashion**_ : ‘ _The term is generally applied only to males and refers to a man at the height of fashion. A dandy. Per the 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue: “the top of the mode”._ ’ (From [Candice Hern website, glossary](https://candicehern.com/regency-world/glossary/).) Back  
>   
> 3\. **To keep one’s pecker up:** ‘ _to remain cheerful in the face of trouble._ ’ Note for the American readers: it’s a common British slang sentence used since 1840, and it has nothing to do with a quite vulgar American English meaning. **Pecker** is used for beak, hence chin. (Eric Partridge, _A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English_.) Back  
>   
>  **Haydn being asked to complete Mozart’s _Requiem_** is an entirely fictitious historical event. Those sketches and Constanze Mozart’s letter exist sorely in this AU! _Endeavour_ corner of the multiverse.  
>   
>  _ **Did you like the return of the Mozart theme in these variations? I’d LOVE to find out!**_  
>   
>  **NEXT: In which our Hero shows his lack of academic mettle.**


	11. Ante diem rationis

_Ante diem rationis._  
Before the day of reckoning  
( _Sequentia_ , Requiem Mass. Attributed to Thomas of Celano.)

  
  


‘Everything, probably.’

Emery’s soft sentence explodes in Morse’s ears like the blowing of the great trumpet on Judgment Day—if he ever believed in such crap. Judgment is here and now, and reckoning is now at hand, it seems.

Yet, Thursday is faster than he is. His hands fly at Emery’s throat, lifting him from his chair by his shirt collar, his inarticulate roar more telling than any interjection that could pass Morse’s lips.

It’s Strange who swiftly peels the DCI’s hands from the hapless don before any lasting damage is done. Emery falls breathlessly back in his chair and instinctively smooths his shirt and tie, then rakes his hand through his bedraggled hair. Once his appearance resembles again one that he could be satisfied looking at in a mirror, he says, ‘I won’t hold it against you. I know how it is. But, Inspector, I’ve nothing to do with your daughter’s—disappearance.’ 

In the pregnant pause that ensues, they hear clearly Thursday’s deep breathing, sounding like a precipitate storm. Morse doesn’t wait for it to still, but asks instead, ‘Would you care to elaborate?’ in such a forced polite tone that it doesn’t take much to guess that if Emery doesn’t comply willingly, he will ensure that he does, one way or the other.

Emery makes a tiny movement, then. His hands cover the Haydn score as if he were touching it for the last time, caressing it reverently. His lips open again, resuming his tale.

‘I found them, the letter written by Constanze Mozart and this score. Oh, they are authentic,’ he hastens to say, forestalling any objection. ‘There are ways and means to find out, but this is no time to—’

Again, he checks himself, taking a pause and tapping his fingers on his knee. His voice is a tone lower when he goes on. ‘I realized that these were my ticket to—’ He raises agonized eyes to Morse. ‘You know how it is! Matthews should never have had it!’

‘Yet he’s the head of the Music Department.’

‘He is,’ Emery admits. His voice is without expression. ‘I knew that my paper would come as a thunderbolt when it would appear—when it will appear in _Music & Letters_. Haydn’s continuation of Mozart’s _Requiem_ is a complete overthrow of all we thought we knew.’ His eyes flash a quick apologetic look at Thursday. ‘I learned only yesterday that my submission was accepted.’

With a spasmodic gesture, Morse folds his hands into his pockets for fear that it would mimic Thursday’s previous impulse. Joan’s father doesn’t understand it yet, but Emery egoistically put his academic glory before the fate of his daughter, and his reaction won’t be tame when it hits.

The older copper darts a mystified look at Morse, who translates flatly, ‘Dr. Emery waited for the acceptation of his research paper about his Haydn manuscript before he came to find us,’ and coils up, expecting Thursday’s outburst. If he springs up fast enough, he’ll manage to stop him while Strange’s still processing it all.

But Thursday’s hands don’t move an inch. His head jerks up as if he were flinging his hat away from it.

‘It’s a confession you’re making, Dr. Emery. Before witnesses.’

Thursday’s voice betrays nothing and Morse wonders how it can be so calm. He knows the man’s volatile nature enough to know it can only be a deceptive lull before the storm.

Emery looks at them, faint surprise etched on his face. ‘A confession? No, no, gentlemen, not at all. I’ve nothing to do with Miss Thursday’s—’ Again the word fails him. He shakes his head ruefully. ‘What I did had nothing to do with that—’

His hand comes to rest on his mouth, trying to push the words back in his throat. But it’s too late now. The words spoken cannot be swallowed back and forgotten.

‘What you did…’ Thursday almost purrs, the sound somehow more frightening than his previous roar.

Morse leans back on his chair, tensing for the truth. For there can only be truth, from now on. He can see it on Emery’s expression, on his flabbergasted face, still wondering how words could fly away so fast, unimpeded.

Maybe silence is the cause for his lapse. And a guilt all the stronger for not being considered. When the music stops, silence overfills with the final notes until they grow so powerful that they encompass all.

‘Alright, what I did!’ Emery’s head straightens up, and he looks without remorse in the coppers’ direction. ‘But I swindled the trickster, that’s all.’

More calmly, he resumes his interrupted story, and the three men seated in front of him are careful not to interrupt him.

‘Incledon knew of my discoveries. How? I don’t know. Maybe from the…expert I confided in. Maybe from Trusler. Trusler helped him in his composing…’ He has a little dry laugh. ‘Rumours are always rife, so the means are not important. At any rate, Incledon knew. And he came to see me, honey-mouthed and cheque book in hand. His offers were…’ 

The sentence drifts away, and from his dreamy eyes, his audience is left to imagine how much an obsessed millionaire collector could offer for a coveted prize. 

‘I refused.’ Emery’s eyes fill with gleeful fire. ‘At last, I owned something he couldn’t scorn.’ 

‘Did he before?’ Morse can’t help asking. ‘Scorn, I mean?’

Emery casts a surprised look at him. ‘His usual means of repaying the expertise I gave—sold him. I had the last laugh.’ He pauses, before letting drop reluctantly, ‘And then, I couldn’t laugh anymore. He offered me something I couldn’t refuse.’

‘He offered you the Mozart fragment, didn’t he?’ Morse says with assurance. ‘“ _Quam olim da capo_.” And you took it in exchange for your find. Or didn’t you?’ His brow creases as he casts a questing glimpse at the Haydn score lying on the table between them.

‘He did.’

‘Knowing that it had been stolen made no difference to you?’ The explosion Morse anticipated from Thursday comes from an unexpected source— _himself_. Much to his surprise, he’s performing the outraged yelling now.

Startled, Emery forgets his role of injured innocence. ‘Goddamn it, Morse! If you don't understand temptation, what kind of copper are you?’

It’s up to Strange to ask the obvious question. ‘But if you swapped the manuscripts, what’s this?’

‘The original, Sergeant. Trusler crafted a perfect copy and Incledon took it.’

Emery picks up the score. On one side, a tear line seems a bit fresher than the rest. ‘Look, I tore out the following blank page. Same paper, same watermark. Trusler used it, it would fool anyone. It is genuine.’

‘And did it fool you?’ Strange asks suddenly. ‘How do you know it wasn’t a double bluff on his part?’

A flash of uncertainty courses through the don’s face but he shrugs it away fast enough. ‘Trusler wouldn’t have risked it. I promised tenure to him.’

‘—while you couldn’t make good your promise,’ Morse adds deprecatingly. ‘A perfect arrangement. A Comedy of Cheats.’

Emery raises a protesting hand, letting it fall again as it meets no retort.

‘What was the deal with Incledon? Collecting?’ Strange asks evenly.

‘No.’ For the first time, Emery seems to hesitate; his mouth opens and closes, then parts again without a sound. Finally, he begins, ‘What I’m going to tell you seems… err… fantastic, but believe me, it’s the truth.’ He sighs. ‘Trusler told me in confidence. He was…wary of Incledon. Shaken. Afraid. And that’s why he refused to go back, when—’ Words rush out, in a rapid flow. ‘Incledon believes he’s Mozart. Metempsychosis.’

Scorn radiates off Morse, Thursday is impassive, while Strange looks merely mystified.

Seeing his perplexed expression, Thursday adds, ‘Reincarnation, Strange. Past lives.’

‘—and all that rot,’ supplies Morse. ‘Diodorus Siculus’ _palingenesía_. Donne’s _Progress of the Soule_. Molly Bloom’s “ _met him pike hoses_ ”.’ He huffs an ironic laugh. 

‘Incledon believes he’s Mozart—reincarnated,’ Emery asserts again. ‘And as such, he is composing his _Requiem_. Finishing it, rather. And, like the original composer,’ (when he pronounces the words, irony weights the don’s voice) ‘—Incledon needed his Süsmayr, his copyist, his assistant. Trusler declined the honour in the end. But Incledon still desired all “his”—Mozart’s—sketches. That’s why he was frantic when I refused him Haydn’s copy of it at first.’

‘Why did he abandon you the Mozart bit? Keen collector, ain’t he?’ Thursday’s voice seems faintly interested to any onlooker. Strange and Morse exchange a quick, alarmed glance, and both unconsciously position themselves. The explosion looms nearer.

Unaware, Emery continues as if his disclosures were merely a friendly after-dinner discussion. ‘He had another one. The last words Mozart wrote. He gave me the one written just above. Not the same value to him. And I intended to give mine back to the Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek, henceforth earning their eternal gratitude… and help for my research. Of course, in the original bargain I made with Incledon, I could still publish the letter from Constanze Mozart—which was still mine—and a transcript of the Haydn sketches. But nothing went as planned.’

Morse snorts openly. ‘Sorry, I don’t believe a word of it. Thieves almost never give things back.’

Again, Emery looks at his hands as if they had an independent life, twisting and bending before him, but doesn’t reply directly. ‘Trusler disappeared. I waited for him in vain; he was supposed to hand some Haydn copies over to me.’

The coppers’ faces hold such a deprecating irony that he supplements after a short pause, ‘Perfectly legitimate copies. Trusler never came. Then, I found out that he might have…sneaked away with my “ _Quam olim da capo_.” It was missing.’

He doesn’t say where it was and how it disappeared, and they don’t ask. It will come out soon enough.

For the first time, a look of fear appears on Emery’s face. ‘But Incledon came to see me. Roaring mad, bent on recovering “his” bit of autograph score. He found out that the Haydn autograph I had—’

‘—fenced?’ Strange supplies.

‘—given him,’ Emery softly reproves, ‘wasn’t…err—’

‘Quite the thing? Say that again!’ Thursday interposes. ‘And?’

‘I had to tell him about Trusler missing. He already knew about his—imitative abilities from a third party. Incledon left me soon afterwards. Madder.’

‘When did it happen?’

‘Two days before Trusler…died.’

If the terse sentences don’t convey the awkwardness of his situation, dressing them with vagueness, it doesn’t take a Nobel Prize to imagine how cowed he must have felt listening to Incledon’s rant and threats. And how panicky, after he found out that his missing assistant had turned up dead at Morse’s house. 

Morse considers the situation for a moment and says, ‘Trusler revenged himself on you, pinching the Mozart fragment. Intended to give it to me, knowing that I might believe him. Not a bright prospect for you.’

Thursday adds pensively, ‘Wouldn’t bet on your academic career, once Trusler blew the gaff about it! Receiving ain’t good on anyone’s tablets. Trusler wouldn’t have known Morse from Adam if you hadn’t spoken to Trusler about him… “The Singing Detective,” huh?’

Emery lowers his head, but not fast enough that Morse doesn’t see that the irony isn’t lost on him. ‘Trusler risked as much,’ he mumbles piteously.

‘No. He wanted to restore it. The Court would have shown some leniency for that. And his forgery was a onetime attempt intended for a—disputable character. He might have gotten off lightly.’

There’s an infinitesimal pause before ‘All this is well and good, but… _Where is my fiancée?_ ’ bursts out of Morse’s mouth.

The only one surprised at the use of the word is himself. Strange grins thinly, a resolute smile without joy. Thursday merely bends a little across the table, his mouth stretched in a deadly thin line, and Emery mirrors the DCI’s movement by recoiling reflectively as much.

‘Lad…’

This time, Morse cannot control the start of disgust when he hears what attempts to draw upon old familiarity.

‘Morse,’ amends Emery, ‘you saw the likeness.’

‘I saw an _illusion_ ,’ he snaps back.

‘If Incledon—if he shot Trusler, he saw Miss Thursday, then. The _Mail_ inferred she was there that day.’

Diffracted images take shape behind Morse’s eyes, combining and contorting in obscene clarity.

_Joan answering the door, finding a stranger before her, then bending to recover a mysterious envelope spiralling on the floor. Shots missing her by a hair’s breadth, as the shells imbedded in the wall of the corridor showed afterwards._

_If Incledon hadn’t seen her face framed in the telescopic sight afterwards…_

_If Joan didn’t happen to listen at full blast to Mozart’s_ Le Nozze di Figaro, _the vehicle for Anna Storace’s Susanna…_

_If her first name weren’t Joan…_ Jo-Ann, _as Incledon twisted it almost obscenely when he bent above her hand…_

Two sets of eyes meet; one fever bright and hard, the other mildly repentant and curious, but it’s Morse who speaks first. ‘If anything—understand me well, _anything_!—happens to Miss Thursday…’ He lets the words drift away.

He doesn’t need to add more. Emery swallows hard and nods. ‘It won’t. Incledon’s in love with Signora Storace.’

Morse jumps to his feet, but this time, neither he nor Strange try to stop Thursday when he delivers the don a knuckle sandwich.

  


* * *

  


The rain doesn’t cease falling all night, its tapping upon the windows an unnerving sound echoing through Joan’s nightmares. In those, she’s running through a quagmire and each step she takes is harder. Her feet drag in the mud, the squelching sounds grow louder, and the odour of the bog fills her nostrils in such a way that she suffocates. There’s someone after her, someone she can’t quite see, but knowing he’s here is somehow worse than seeing him clearly.

When she wakes up, she’s tangled in the sheets, and she couldn’t swear that she doesn’t hear faint retreating footsteps echoing through the corridor.

_She’s got to get away. Soon._

_Now._

Yet Joan goes back to sleep, a fitful sleep not restorative in the slightest.

When she wakes up, her decision is made. Today is the day she gambles everything and puts it all on the same number.

Mrs. Mara’s chatter doesn’t really enter her ears. Joan merely chooses her dress for the day—a lovely green Empire dress, with the waistline right under her breasts and long sleeves. If she sees a stay again, or a corset or anything that squeezes her waist, must be laced up, forbids her to bend down or to breathe, she’s going to do something her maid will regret. At least, this dress is more sensible than some of the others, and lets her breathe deeply in and out. ‘ _Excellent_ ,’ whispers a voice in her head. ‘ _You might have to run_.’

_Run_ … Such a sensible idea, but where? _If she could at least reach a house, any house, with a phone_ …

As she ponders the impossible, Mrs. Mara’s chit-chat grabs her attention. She’s chattering about last night’s rain shower and how it has refreshed the atmosphere.

‘It has,’ Joan opines. ‘I’d love to have a walk, or even better, a ride.’

‘A ride?’ The woman’s face puckers in indecision.

‘Oh, yes!’ Joan enthuses. ‘Where are the Maestro’s—chariots?’

She got it right. Reading Heyer’s book hasn’t been a waste of time. At the mention of ‘ _chariots_ ,’ Mrs. Mara regains her equanimity. _The fool! So, she truly believes that dressing in out-of-fashion clothes has unearthed the Signora Storace part of her?_ Joan feels like scoffing.

‘Signora, I’m not sure…’

‘No chariots?’ Joan’s attitude reveals nothing else than airy disappointment. Mrs. Mara’s eyes lower again, focusing on her hands.

‘No,’ the woman answers, absorbed on her task. She’s carefully draping a shawl on Joan’s shoulders. The motives are a geometric pattern that doesn’t scream eighteenth-century to Joan’s inexpert eyes.

‘No curricle, either?’ Joan insists.

Maybe she shouldn’t have. Perplexed, then inquisitive eyes pore into hers. Joan tries to look as innocent as she can.

‘Why the questions, Signora?’

‘I’d love to take a turn in the park, but I can’t do so with these,’ she answers, kicking an ankle out of the long dress. ‘I can hardly walk in the mud with slippers. Neither can you. A little chariot with ponies would be the very thing.’

‘Oh, there aren’t horses or ponies here. But if you were to ask the Maestro…’

Joan frowns. That’s the last thing she wants to do.

_So that means of escape is out_. She bites down disappointment, unexpectedly feeling tears surging in the corner of her eyes.

But, as Mrs. Mara gathers pins and ribbons into the ivory box placed on the dressing table, she muses a little absent-mindedly. ‘He still has Bixby’s cars in the stables, but they wouldn’t qualify.’

‘No,’ Joan allows under her breath, although it hitches in excitement. ‘They wouldn’t.’

Carefully, she extends a hand over to the dressing table to stay upright. Instead of standing staidly on the spot, she wants to sing, to dance, to do something extravagant.

Patience, Mrs. Mara’s strong belief in all this fantastic gibberish and Joan’s apparent compliance—dressing funny, speaking with words she picks up in the Georgette Heyer novels carefully hidden under her mattress, and opening wide eyes, acquiescing to all this crap—just gave her a crucial information.

Now, Joan knows _where_ she’s held prisoner. 

If the cars were Joss Bixby’s, she’s at Lake Silence or nearby. Not far from Oxford. The body of water she sees from the windows of her room, sparkling from between the foliage, far away, down below, might even be the lake.

Her lips tighten, as her hand goes automatically to her décolletage, where she usually hides her ‘JB’ token, before she returns it to her side in a parody of ease.

‘JB.’ _Joss Bixby_.

_Of course_. She’s an idiot.

The _Mail_ was full of Bixby’s murder and of its ramifications. It was all so very romantic, the stuff of novels—the evil twin brother, assumed identities. There was quite a lot of coverage about it. It had it all: murder, aristocrats, adultery, mansions, gambling, double lives, the works.

And Morse being somehow mixed up in all this mess with his posh friends added to the fascination she felt at the times. Joan knew he had secreted himself at Lake Silence: Dad grumbled enough about Morse’s ‘desertion’—what a waste it was, feeling responsible for it—and if he didn’t exactly _tell_ Joan, can one blame her if she has good hearing?

As for Endeavour, he never really disclosed any of the details to her. He merely alluded to it when Joan once joked about destiny and Tarot cards reading, saying that he might have left Oxford altogether after the Bleinheim Vale fiasco, but something held him back. Or rather someone, to be accurate—Tony Donn, when he housed Morse in the wooden shack situated on his family’s grounds.

Good old Tony! Turned out that he considered employing Morse as his secretary or something, to help him back on his feet. Money and friendship combined can be quite supportive. Funny thing was, Joss Bixby had the same idea.

Involuntarily, Joan’s hand flies again to the token secured under the strap of her bra. Her fingers can’t make out the plastic shape, but she knows it’s there, nonetheless. It’s somehow comforting, linking her with Endeavour through the most unlikely guardian angel: con man, charmer, master of smoke and mirrors… Yet, aren’t they still at work in his house? Theatrical smoke, unreliable mirrors whose silvering reflects not reality, but deep-seated fantasies, music without sound, and ghosts without memories. It’s as if the previous owner of the house somehow lingered in the premises, casting a spell so nothing is what it seems.

Joss Bixby probably owned a lot of cars. _And his cars are still here_.

Joan’s eyes light up.

Knowing Incledon’s obsession for efficiency, their petrol tanks should be filled up to their brims.

If she could only get to them…

With a little smile and a nod to her dresser, Joan gather the flounces of her dress and sails majestically down the stairs, bolstered by her decision. The day’s still young. The day’s a babe that she’s gonna nurse and put to sleep when she distracts Incledon’s attention, and then... Yes, today is the day of her deliverance.

Whatever it takes.

  


* * *

  


The occasion comes sooner than she expects.

At breakfast, Incledon simpers and tries to court her, but Joan stares icily at her coffee cup and her buttered toasts. Rallying, she pastes on a false smile, puts out a dimple or two, and listens with apparent enthusiasm to her gaoler’s ideas for the day, her mind churning all the while.

It’s only when he claps his hands with deep satisfaction that Joan realises that she agreed to things she hasn’t the slightest idea about.

‘Err… What did you say?’ she says, ruthlessly interrupting his last sentence.

‘That I was delighted that you’d do me the honour of singing for me.’

The dreaded verb is no sooner out of his mouth that Joan clutches her napkin so rigidly that she fears she’ll rip it in two. 

_Singing?_ What could have possessed her to… God. She must buy time.

‘Certainly not without an orchestra!’ she says sharply, with her best authoritative manner. The kind of tone she imagines a diva might adopt when she’s not happy.

But he’s not taken in. ‘I’ll play. Remember our rehearsals?’ he says with a glimmer in his eyes that makes Joan suspect that he’s not only talking of musical… activities.

Her throat suddenly dry, she tries feebly to postpone the inevitable. ‘In a few hours. You know how coffee is bad for my voice.’ Her chin points to her now empty cup, her voice taking a nuance of regret as she adds, ‘If I had known you wanted to hear me, I would have drunk tea.’

The excuse may be proffered on the spur of the moment and not scientifically proven—not that Joan knows anything about all this—, but Incledon accepts to give her the benefit of the doubt.

Emboldened by her success, Joan asks him to prepare the so-called ‘morning room’ for her… recital. That is, one disapproving servant, his face struggling to smooth up his drooping mouth, moves all the seats until they form a semi-circular row, like an arena. Side tables are pushed away along the French windows, on each side of the improvised stage. Behind the seats, the massive mirrors on the wall replicate ugly or precious antique knick-knacks littering the gilded rococo tables, as well as the drawn curtains used as a backdrop. 

Yet, at Joan’s command, the silent flunkey takes great care to leave unencumbered one of the French windows providing access to the stairs leading to the back formal garden and fountain—and nearby stables. _If she could make a dash for it… But then, what?_ They would catch her soon enough.

Nonetheless, under pretext of supervising the footman, Joan issues contradictory orders, burying her real intents behind whims and fancies.

_She doesn’t want any shepherdess statuettes in there; they are distracting her. No, the yellowish armchair has to go; the colour doesn’t agree with her dress. Is there a draft coming from here?_ A quick opening and closing of the windows reassure her that her diva’s delicate throat won’t be at risk. _The curtains should be drawn there and opened a slit over there—the rays of sun would distract her_. The orders and counter-orders drag until the middle of the morning.

Then, after much unnecessary fussing, there’s no way of postponing it. She’ll have to sing.

Her throat tightening under stress, Joan tries a last resort.

‘Before I sing, I want to rehearse the scene, my movements. Take the feel of the stage,’ she states with false aplomb.

Then the beginning of an idea takes shape—this might be her immediate salvation. ‘Do you have a recording of _The Marriage of Figaro_?’

‘One? No, several. Why?’

‘The Kleiber one? The conductor was the closest to Mozart’s—your indications,’ she fibs, praying that it’s indeed the case and that Incledon does own it.

If not, she’s in a pickle. That’s the records box set that Endeavour owns, and Joan has only listened to this version. Enough times to have somehow memorized a few passages and highlights, but she would be completely lost with another recording.

Can she even mimic the music and stay in the right tempo? She believes not, but still, she has no choice.

It’s with trepidation that Joan listens to Incledon ordering one of his minions to fetch one of his record players and the said LPs. When the apparatus has been placed on a little side table, then plugged in, she frowns and says with an exaggerated gesture. ‘I can’t perform without props.’

This occasions another delay. This time, at Joan’s direction, Mrs. Mara provides a maid’s apron and a ruffled cap, the kind that ladies wore in the morning to hide one’s untidy hair. Must have come with one of the theatrical costumes she’s got to wear daily, Joan supposes.

When she has tied the apron round her waist and slipped the cap in the front pocket, Joan inhales sharply. Her heart beats so loudly in her throat that she believes Incledon can hear it from his present position, seated in an armchair, at the bottom of the circle of seats, an intent and rapt expression on his face.

‘Come here!’ she says, gesturing as she tells him to move nearer.

Puzzled, Incledon gets up. He can’t take more than three steps, though. When he stands before Joan, she orders briskly, ‘Kneel!’ When he doesn’t obey at once, she repeats her order, specifying, ‘Come on! You’re Cherubino!’

Understanding clears the man’s brow and he kneels obediently, not without attempting to make a grab at Joan’s waist. She evades him by taking a step back, heart beating wildly, ‘Now, let’s rehearse!’

Swiftly, she goes to the turntable, takes the record out of the inner sleeve, and puts it on. The needle falls upon the recitative just prior to the aria Joan has in mind.

It’s more action than song, as Susanna the chambermaid arranges a cap on the little page’s head while singing, disguising him as a woman: Countess Almaviva wants to catch her husband red-handed in an illicit rendezvous, and the disguised Cherubino is to be the bait. A weird disguise, that, as a woman sings the page! A ‘trouser role,’ Endeavour called it.

The orchestral prelude fills the room, then the soprano’s voice begins, ‘ _Venite, inginocchiatevi_ (Come here, get down on your knees),’ pauses briefly, then goes on, ‘— _restate fermo lì!_ (and stay still there!)’

Joan takes the cap in her hand and pushes Incledon’s head down, so his lowered gaze can’t perceive that her lips don’t synch with the music and that she only mouths the words very approximatively.

‘ _Restate, restate, restate fermo lì, restaaaa-te fermo lì!_ ’ repeats the recorded singer, with a smile in her voice.

As the opera requires, Joan puts the female cap on Incledon’s head, trying to avoid touching his hair. 

Incledon’s arm reaches again, trying to pull Joan closer to him, and she takes a preventive step back, her hem brushing one foot of the side tables. On it, there are twin elephant tusks, outrageous things set in yellow bronze stands, alongside a bouquet of ugly roses cast in china and an enamelled snuff box.

Joan’s move doesn’t deter Incledon’s approach. He bends forward, his knees sliding on the floor as he progresses towards her, and he grasps Joan’s waist again. Barely repressing a shudder of disgust, she jerks back, in a vain attempt to shake him off.

The elephant tusks wobble again as Joan’s backing off jolts their foundation, bending backwards upon the table. With one hand, she pushes Incledon away, her other one groping to find a support point.

Short of breath, she says desperately, ‘Music’s going on,’ and manages to slip away towards the record player. It’s not before her hand closes on the turntable arm and rewinds the music that she has an epiphany.

Incledon resumes his position with an outward show of obedience and Joan goes through the motions another time.

As Susanna reaches ‘… _drittissimo, guardatemi, Madama qui non è._ (…keep looking straight on ahead, Madame is not there),’ Joan seizes the hem of the ruffled cap with both hands and shoves it hard on the kneeling man’s brow, blinding him unexpectedly. Before Incledon has the time to tear it off, almost without thinking, Joan’s hand stretches towards one of the monstrous tusks, grabs it feverously and, swinging it with both hands, brings it down on his head.

It makes a very satisfying _thud_ when the curved ivory meets Incledon’s nape. He collapses onto the floor, the cap falling comically sideway. Her breathing erratic, Joan bends fearfully over him, then risks a finger to his neck. 

There’s a pulse. It’s faint, but it’s here.

‘I didn’t kill him,’ Joan breathes with relief, but she quickly takes stock of her situation. Swiftly, she goes to the door and locks it, then runs through the French windows, across the terrace and towards expected freedom.

Incledon proudly qualified himself as a ‘neck-or-nothing;’ NOTE the daring must be contagious. Far away, somewhere, probably in the recess of her mind, Joan almost hears someone chuckling.

  


* * *

  


It’s still cold and damp outside, but Joan doesn’t care. She runs as fast as she can, taking care not to trip over the long dress as she goes down the stairs, circles the entrapped Tritons and sea horses splashing in the fountain, and follows the trail going around the house.

Her heart hammers when she spots, through the foliage, the roof of a building set a little behind the main house. If it isn’t the stables, she’s done it all for nothing.

She slows her running, changing it to a brisk walk, unties her apron and tosses it in the bushes.

The gate of the building is open, and from it, reverberates the characteristic hum of an engine. Joan heaves a huge sigh and squares her shoulders expectantly.

Inside the huge space, sports cars are aligned in a row. The sound comes from one on the far left, a red one whose door is open, a leg sticking out of it.

The engine growls again, followed by a sound of male satisfaction.

Exactly what she wished for. 

Again, Joan’s hand rises to her décolletage and brushes her lucky token to draw strength from it. The next few seconds will be crucial.

As she nears the bright red Porsche, a liveried man slides hastily out of it, a guilty expression on his face. Still, when he spots Joan, it is swiftly replaced with surprise. ‘What are you—?’

Joan doesn’t let him the time to end the sentence. Her eyes suddenly take the same look that DCI Thursday uses to impress suspects, but she isn’t aware of the pronounced likeness. ‘Don’t you dare move!’ she flings out to the flabbergasted man. ‘Copper’s wife and Inspector’s daughter. Stop me now, and be charged later with accessory for kidnapping! You’d hate to be detained at Her Majesty’s Pleasure, I’m sure!’

The man’s mouth opens with a silent ‘O’ and he shakes his head meekly. Hastily, he takes a step back from the Porsche. Joan slips into that opening, then into the driver’s seat.

The keys are still in the ignition, and the engine roars satisfactorily as Joan presses the pedal.

_I’m going to make it; I’m going to make it_. 

The chanting invades Joan’s brain until this is the only sound that she hears. The avenue before her looms empty. The wheels make a squelching screech on the still-wet gravel path as she takes the bend as fast as she dares.

Resolutely, Joan puts her foot down on the accelerator, leaving the manor behind her.

And then the worst happens.

Sloping down the hill, then veering away from it, the avenue curves sharply between the ditches that flank it, twin rows of chestnuts still giving it a welcoming shade in summer. Joan’s wobbly driving keeps propelling the Porsche from one side of the road to the other. She focuses hard on keeping the powerful car on a straight line, but the sudden bend is an additional difficulty.

Nearly as soon as she heaves a relieved sigh, believing that she has regained perfect control of the car, the left front wheel hits a patch of damp gravel—and under it, squishy mud—and everything goes crazy in a second.

Abruptly, the car slides sidelong in a glissade. Joan, at most an average driver with her own Mini, does her best to recover control, and yet, nothing responds. The brake is stiff against the satin slipper, and she can’t help wincing as she hits it hard in a rash reflex. The Porsche brushes a chestnut tree, barely avoiding the ditch, then leaps back into the avenue like a drunk toad, as Joan drags frantically at the wheel to get her car back on track. But it lurches back on the opposite side and plunges down the ditch, fortunately between two trees.

Earth and sky and truncated visions of grass, branches, and greenery change places so fast before her eyes like reels of film gone wild, that Joan doesn’t take into account the astounded face of the occupants of the black Jag speeding towards her. The screeching of the brakes doesn’t register either, or the clang of doors opening at a frantic pace as the Porsche concludes its last tumble. The desperate braking of the car following the Jag closely doesn’t catch her attention either.

There is a brief darkness and then, all is still.

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Two bits of dialogues were pinched from an _Inspector Morse_ episode**, _The Wolvercote Tongue_ : Eddie Poindexter’s ‘ _Goddamn it, inspector! If you don't understand temptation, what kind of a policeman are you?_ ’ and Morse’s ‘ _I'm sorry, sir, thieves almost never give things back._.’  
>   
> The **_Nozze di Figaro_ recording** alluded to is conducted by Erich Kleiber and was issued in Britain in 1959 on the Decca label (SXL 2087-8-9-90).  
>   
> You can watch Lucia Popp sing **‘ _Venite, Inginocchiatevi_ ’** on [You Tube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrEVXyco-lQ).  
>   
> NOTE. A **neck-or-nothing** : a bold daring sportsman or sportswoman. Back  
>   
>  _ **Isn’t Joan clever? Hearing (or rather, reading) your thoughts would make my day! Don’t hesitate to comment, question, and/or criticize!**_  
>   
>  **NEXT: In which our Hero doesn’t spare a glance at Bixby’s former gift.**


	12. Confutatis maledictis

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank for your awesome feedback, it brightens up my days!  
> And now, without further ado... the answer to 'will they or won't they?'  
>   
> 

_Confutatis maledictis_  
When the accursed have been confounded  
( _Sequentia_ , Requiem Mass. Attributed to Thomas of Celano.)

  
  


‘Damn!’ Joan exclaims shakily when she peels her hands from her face a few seconds later, restoring her sight. 

She had shielded her face reflexively as she went under. ‘ _Better not let_ him _see me like this, disfigured_ ’ had been her last conscious thought, and she proffers a weak chuckle at the sheer stupidity of it, now that the immediate danger is past. 

She’s stuck.

The Porsche is jammed, slanted, bonnet-first into the drenched earth. Since the car spun around, the driver’s door is now flapping into the sky, while the other side presses hard into the earth. The jolt must have somehow opened it. Through the aperture, tantalizing glimpses of clouds and foliage beckon Joan.

Sudden urgency takes hold of her, and she moves slowly, wincing at the various bruises scattered all over. She’ll probably be black and blue all over, but she’s lucky to a certain extent: she seems to have incurred no serious harm when she was slammed sideways towards the passenger’s seat.

Dazed, Joan reaches towards the alluring aperture, trying to find a hold to hoist herself out of the compartment, but her arms shake so much that she can’t find a purchase. Gingerly, she tries to move around, in order to evade the constriction of the wheel, when she realizes that she aches in places where she didn’t believe she had any muscles or nerves or flesh.

‘Damn!’ she says again, with ardent intensity this time.

The third one dies in her throat when frantic male voices and precipitate footsteps come closer.

She’s done for.

With desperation, Joan tries again, wriggling so her feet now rest on the passenger’s door. She pushes hard, harder, frenzy adding supplemental strength, and her endeavours meet with success. She yanks her head and shoulders out of the driver’s door, and she’s struggling to put a knee on the body of the car, bundled as she is in her cumbersome dress, when hard hands suddenly hoist her out.

Joan squeals, trashing ineffectively against the tight hold. Stumbling to her feet, she raises panicked eyes and ends up staring into her father’s white face.

‘Dad!’ she cries out in relief, flying deeper into his shaking arms. He enfolds her fiercely, and she returns the embrace in spades, wincing as his hands close over tender ribs. ‘How did you know?’

But he merely repeats, ‘You’re alright, you’re alright,’ in such a stricken tone that she asserts, ‘I’m alright,’ and goes on repeating it until he really hears her. Then, Joan asks once more, ‘How did you know?’ and this time, he sort of answers.

‘Morse suspected before we did,’ Thursday admits in an uneven voice. ‘But we knew for sure only this morning. Needed a warrant.’

‘Ah!’

She pushes herself away from her father’s arms, sensing how loath he is to let her go, and suddenly notices Strange and Morse standing a few feet away, looking relieved and more than a little happy. If Morse’s mouth still shows signs of strain, there’s a dawning gleam in his eyes. If Jim holds himself ready to stride back into the Jag and go arrest Incledon on the spot, his stance is slowly relaxing. Behind them, their heads sticking out of the windows of the second police car, three constables try their hardest not to gape at her.

Sudden relief comes in such a flood that when it recedes, it leaves Joan almost giddy. Above her father’s shoulder, her eyes meet Morse’s.

Determinedly, she looks away; she can’t be distracted right now. And, if she’s honest, she doesn’t want to get the confirmation of her worse fears: that he merely looks at her now as another damsel-in-distress to save, another case, and not as his—

‘Incledon—’ Joan chews her lip nervously when she hears how unsteady the name sounds. Resolutely, she forges on, ‘I slugged him and ran. Struck hard. With an elephant tusk. He was being…’

‘He was what?’ her father growls.

Joan hastens to squash the thought at once. ‘No harm done. Just—slimy.’

A few feet away, Morse’s hands fold into fists as his face hardens, and Strange takes a step forward. Her motionless father manages to look even more enraged.

Joan raises her hands placatingly. ‘I’m alright. Truly,’ she hastens to repeat. Nonetheless, it doesn’t appease them.

Morse’s face is set in a mask of fury, until he asks in a weirdly interested tone, ‘Elephant tusk?’

Morse and Thursday exchange a look Joan can’t decipher as she elaborates, ‘Served him right! Very proud of them, he was! Told me that he killed them all himself. Never left the stalking to his guides, and…’ Her voice checks as she understands that something is dead wrong.

Then it hits her.

‘You mean… He did—kill—?’ Her Dad’s grim face says it all. ‘Incledon shot… Oh, God.’

She slumps a little. All this while, she thought she was held by a maniac, but it appears she’s also been enclosed with a murderer.

Without meaning to, Joan sways, and another pair of arms enfold her as she begins to shake all over.

‘—cold,’ she mumbles, feeling truly miserable when her teeth begin to shatter.

Something soft and warm swiftly surrounds her shoulders.

‘There! Put it on,’ Morse’s voice whispers in her ear, and she slips obediently her arms into the sleeves. When she’s finished, his index finger strokes her neck furtively above the collar of his jacket with a comforting tenderness, before his hands fall back awkwardly by his side.

She raises her eyes to him—eyes holding an appeal she’s not aware of. Morse’s jacket is warm and whiffs of aftershave and ‘him’ drift comfortingly into her nostrils. Joan crosses her arms across her breast, hugging herself and gathering the garment round her, a substitute embrace.

But she had no need for it when Morse pulls her passionately into his arms, heedless of father and colleagues. His hold is so tight that Joan squeaks in happy surprise and brief discomfort, then gasps involuntarily when a small bump hits her sore flesh.

‘What?’ she says automatically, rubbing the tender spot.

His mouth curves a little, with a sheepish expression. Morse’s hand reaches into his trousers pocket, and proffers the culprit, offering a small leather box to her. ‘Yours, if you still want it.’

‘You kept it with you? All this time?’

He nods slowly, apprehensive eyes searching hers.

She can well believe he kept it at hand. Morse has dark rings round his eyes, and they still look haunted. His possessive arm still round her waist, she opens the jewellery box. Nestled in faded silk, her engagement ring sparkles with renewed fervour.

‘It’s up to you.’ 

With this enticement, she offers him her hand, fingers extended invitingly, and he slips the ring home; the renewal of a promise they both knew couldn’t be severed that easily.

Only then does he kiss her. She twines her fingers in his hair, pulling him closer; savouring his lips, his taste, the unhurried way they reconnoitre each other. How their tongues caress and fence, and their breaths mingle. Her hands slide round his neck, and while she tenderly strokes the stiff nape, she feels all the worry and pain ebb gradually away under her fingers.

Somebody clears his throat loudly, and Joan raises her head regretfully to meet her father’s carefully neutral eyes. She blushes so deeply that she feels the heat spreading across her inflamed skin.

‘Err…’ she begins, but she doesn’t feel sorry. At all.

Morse regains a dispassionate expression, and she’s familiar enough with him to know that, in the heat of the moment, he totally forgot that he would never ‘ _devant les parents _,’ as he once told her.__

Slowly, regretfully, Joan unhooks her arms from Morse’s neck, noticing as she does so that her hands are stained with… _ashes_? There are even some left on her father’s shoulders. _What have they…_

__Morse gives Thursday a quick, sarcastic smile. ‘Time for an arrest, sir?’_ _

__‘Drive on!’ Thursday turns to his daughter. ‘Joan, you’ll be staying in the Jag with Constable Boyce, until the ambulance comes.’_ _

__Before she can voice a protest, Morse leads her to the back seat and she slips in obediently. Strange leads the way in the other car, while Morse drives the Thursdays up the hill to the mansion._ _

____

  


* * *

  


Pandemonium awaits them when they reach the entrance. Wide open, the massive doors frame Mrs. Mara’s silhouette standing in the doorway, still as a statue except for the wringing of her hands, while a footman darts back and forth, then dashes towards an unseen room in the background. When she glimpses Joan seated in the Jag, close to her father, her face takes on a comical look of shock.

She totters towards the door of the car, peering incredulously into Joan’s face, then stammers to no one in particular, ‘There she is, there she is… The Maestro must know!’ 

Before she can go back into the mansion, a hand seizes her arm gently. Morse’s. His voice is kind when he asks the distracted woman, ‘Is Mr. Incledon home?’

‘Certainly, certainly. I left him—’ she begins, gesturing towards the building.

‘—In the morning room?’ Joan asks as she puts her hand on the handle of her door, tugging at it despite her father’s reproaches. She rakes a hand through her hair, trying to smooth the ridiculous ringlets which make her look like an antique Baa Baa, Black Sheep. ‘I’m coming with you, she asserts, ‘I know the lie of the house.’

Peremptorily, she opens the door of the car. As swiftly, Morse closes it.

‘So do I,’ Morse says in a tone that brooks no contradiction. ‘Joan, do as your father says. Incledon could use the same gun.’

‘And that makes it alright for you to go?’

‘That makes it our job,’ he contradicts her in a firm tone.

_She would be in the way. If he were to take another risk for her… It makes sense_. Being a copper’s wife will probably be more difficult that she even imagined. Knowing when to push and where to pull might take a while.

Reluctantly, she nods, and leans back on the seat. With a glare that holds her more securely in place, Thursday exits the Jag and waves to one of the constables. ‘Stay with her, and drive a little away. Ask for an ambulance. Miss Thursday must be checked up.’

He doesn’t say anything about Incledon, but from the constable’s sudden look of understanding, the thought isn’t far from both their minds. 

Restraining her impatience, Joan resigns herself to her fate: she’s to sit tight and smile obediently, while the men do what coppers do when they do their job.

The Jag is too far away for her to know what’s going on, parked in the alley leading to the north façade though the lawn, its unrelieved black metal gleaming dully between the emerald green lawn and pale-yellow sand. There’s nothing here, apart from the monotony of a severe perspective leading to the extravagant mansion, the dull aches in Joan’s torso and hips that slowly make themselves known with additional throbbing, and her questions to the constable, met with an apologetic smile.

Time seems to flow at a stuttering pace before the radio summons the obedient constable back to the house. Joan’s hand flies to the handle, preparing to open the door so that she can swing her legs out of the Jag as soon as it stops.

Her rebellion is uncalled for. Morse is waiting for her, and helps her out.

Joan turns her back openly to the waiting ambulance and the nurses eyeing her with a greedy glint, obviously eager to get their hands on any patient. Morse laughs softly and understandingly. ‘You’ll have to be checked up, you know,’ he says, and she understands that her slight grimace as she exited from the car didn’t escape his attention.

‘I know.’ Joan gathers the folds of her wide skirt in her hand. ‘But I can’t wait to take this off… My clothes are upstairs.’

He nods agreeably, summoning one of the nurses in the same sweeping gesture, and goes up the stairs with them to the Pink Bedroom.

His eyebrows lift fractionally when he sees the garish colour. ‘Went a little overboard, didn’t he?’

‘You have no idea.’ 

Joan slips out of Morse’s jacket, then strides decisively towards the walk-in closet before checking her progress.

‘Err… Morse, would you mind undoing the back of my bloody dress? I can’t do it on my own.’

His lopsided smile reaches his eyes, and a sudden flash of delight makes his face look a decade younger. While he unhooks and unlaces the fastenings, he whispers laughingly into her ear, ‘Rehearsal time?’

‘Don’t you wish!’

His only reply is a kiss on a now-naked shoulder blade, before she feels his lips hovering not far above it, as if expecting her response. Morse’s lips on her skin create the most delightful shiver, and to avoid thinking of it, she whispers back, ‘I’d rather be caught dead than wear such a meringue dress for our wedding!’

Morse’s smile leaves a burning imprint on her shoulder before Joan flies into the walk-in closet, then goes into the bathroom, holding her regular clothes.

It’s a relief to take off this costume and get into her clothes—clean and pressed _normal_ clothes.

As if clothing somehow defined the woman, suddenly Joan feels more herself than she was a few minutes ago. The constricting dresses somehow forbade her to move, to feel—almost to think. Were those elaborate fashions a means of female enslavement at the times? Perhaps they were. Give her jeans or overalls anytime!

It’s with a lighter step that she goes back in the bedchamber, finding Morse in heated conversation with the nurse. The woman finally nods in agreement, and he looks satisfied.

As he prepares to step out of the room, Joan raises a hand to stop his progress.

‘Where are you going?’

‘Downstairs. A few loose ends to tie up.’

But his eyes narrow and focus on her hand with a puzzled look. Following his stare, Joan finds out that she’s still holding her lucky token. With a slight blush, she slips it into a pocket of her coat.

In two quick strides, Morse reaches her. His hand plunges into the said pocket, fishes the token out and examines it thoughtfully. For a second, his mouth spasms and he returns it to her.

‘It was Bixby’s, wasn’t it?’ Joan asks.

‘Yes.’

‘And you couldn’t save him.’

‘No.’

The terse answers veil a world of carefully hidden pain, but they pierce Joan’s heart all the same.

‘Friend?’

‘No.’ He gazes past her, his eyes regarding inward, with something between regret and the shadow of a reluctant hope refusing to die down, before handing her the token back. ‘A brother, maybe. If he had truly survived.’

And with that staggering qualifier, he leaves her to the not-so-tender mercies of the nurse, who probes and searches and pokes, and finally reveals that Joan will have some aches and temporary minor haematoma for some time, but that nothing is broken. She’ll have to go to the Radcliffe Infirmary for a more thorough check-up and some pain killers, though.

Strangely, when Joan goes down, her step is less assured than when she walked shod in satin slippers. The path seems more traitorous than before, full of new uncertainties and qualms.

She’ll have to confront Incledon, to meet his little piercing, mad eyes once more, to hear his venomously silken tones or his disgusting protestations of love again—feelings made even more wrong because he utters them. And she’ll have to face the music for what she did, an act of violence that upsets her stomach now that she has the time to replay its gruesome details in vivid colours.

But fortunately, once she reaches the place of her decisive playacting, lead to it by one of the constables, no one reminds her of her past misconduct. The empty chairs and armchairs enclose a space as void of sprawled bodies as the route leading to it. Incledon isn’t there anymore.

When he hears them coming in, Thursday raises from his crouch near the abandoned elephant tusk. Joan takes a wary step forward, and peers at it. The curve of the ivory is stained with a faint trace of blood, and she shudders.

‘Head wounds always bleed profusely,’ her father says noncommittally.

‘Yeah,’ Joan articulates. ‘You already told me.’

Between them passes the memory of her fall from the low branch of a tree when she was ten. The sight of blood which scared her, and more than that, the expected scolding she knew she deserved. But all she got then from her Dad had been a cuddle, a plaster on her head where a branch had grazed it, and a stern admonition of obeying his dictates; they were for her good. And she had mostly done so, afterwards.

‘I didn’t kill him, then?’ Phrasing it aloud is a relief, and Joan realises how much it bothered her. Thursday hears it in her tone, and flashes her a comforting smile.

‘Fit enough to do a runner!’ He takes another look around, his interrogative eyes falling upon the record player and the chairs arranged in a ring. ‘What’s all this about?’

‘Had to fake something, he wanted me to sing!’

‘Stands to reason that you can’t sing like a trained opera singer!’ Morse’s voice says behind her, making her jump.

Joan winces and mumbles uneasily, ‘No, I can’t!’

For the first time since he held his daughter in his arms today, Thursday’s mouth curves up. ‘Can’t hold a tune at all,’ he says cheerfully.

‘Daaaad!’ Joan drawls in an agonized voice, but he pays no heed.

‘Joke in the family, how she used to make goldfish faces at school when she—’

‘Daddy!’ Joan yelps, feeling her face flushing redder. 

She casts a swift look at her fiancé. Still standing in the doorway, he looks totally incredulous. Struck dumb.

Morse blinks twice. ‘Can’t sing? At all?’ He sounds totally stunned.

‘I can’t,’ Joan flings at him, crossing her arms in a defensive stance. ‘Happy, now?’

‘Probably for the best,’ her father tells them, casting an ironic eye towards his bagman. ‘Trouble enough with one singer in the family, don’t you think?’

Before Morse can utter the retort that he was obviously forming, hasty footsteps herald the appearance of Joan’s driver. ‘No one in the house, sir, except for the servants and the old lady. Sergeant Strange found an armoury room, he’s taking care of that.’

‘Searched the house that fast?’ Morse pipes in, chin obstinate and jutting. Clearly, it doesn’t seem good enough for him.

‘Yes, sir. The wings are walled up. Only the main part is occupied.’

_So the house was merely a theatre set for Incledon’s whims. And a repository of his collection_ , Joan understands. _Did he really want to live there or was it only for show?_

‘Incledon’s collection!’ Joan suddenly cries out. ‘Is it still locked up? He wouldn’t get away without it!’

‘No time for anything,’ Morse reassures her. ‘Between your running away and our coming here, it took no more than half an hour.’

Still, it isn’t enough. ‘You don’t understand!’ Joan says, grabbing at his arm frantically. ‘It’s here! The missing Mozart fragment! I saw it!’

‘Is it?’

‘At least, it was. Hidden away in his private library, in a score. _The Haunted Tower_. Easy to snatch it up and run.’

However, the room turned into a vault is securely locked, and a search for the keys wields nothing. A constable will have to stand guard before the only door until reinforcement and tools arrive from the Cowley station. Policemen and musical experts will have a long assessment ahead of them: the Texas tycoon might hold more than one stolen relic. Also left behind, Incledon’s pitiful exertions to complete Mozart’s _Requiem_ are spread haphazardly onto his desk, a last testimony of hubris before the fall.

Strange has already contacted the nick to issue an alert to port and airports and to block the roads in the Thames Valley. But for all this, the police have slim hope of catching the fugitive before he leaves the country: Incledon might well go under a different name. With his riches and his obvious dodgy contacts, he might have passports with different identities already. But at least, his latest actions will make difficult for him to regain his footing in the Mozart academia, and being branded a murderer won’t help his status any in the States.

Extradition might prove to be a trifle difficult to organise, but in the end, Incledon will pay retribution. Neither the British police nor the Austrian state will leave him to enjoy his collection and his delusions in peace.

In the meantime, the coppers have rounded up the servants—among which Mrs. Mara is doing a good impression of a panicked hen—and are beginning to question them.

Her round, uncomprehending eyes casting a mute question towards Joan is the last image she takes with her, as she steps meekly in the ambulance and speeds towards Oxford, the Radcliffe Infirmary, home, and Mum.

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And with this chapter come the end of the Bixby ‘cameos’! Ghost or friendly memory? You may interpret it as you wish… Both are valid.  
>   
>  ** _What do you think of this ‘rescue’? Thoughts? Comments? Questions? I’d love to find out!_**  
>   
>  **NEXT: In which there might be an Happily Ever After ending… at least, for a while!**  
>   
> 


	13. Solo amor può terminar

_Questo giorno (…)_  
_in contenti e in allegria_  
_solo amor può terminar_.  
Only love can end this day (…)  
in satisfaction and in joy.  
(Mozart, _The Marriage of Figaro_ , Act IV, _Finale_.)

  


Time is a fickle thing, Joan finds out. It stretches interminably when one is expecting something, and gallops relentlessly when one does need to hold it back. And it even manages to achieve both, in the most uncomfortable moments, swinging from one to the other.

The ten days before her wedding day are a blur, mingling her parents’ relief when Joan ebulliently bounces back, Morse’s not-so-discreet hovering over her—as if he feared that she’d break down or…anything—, engrossing Welfare work, and all the myriad last-minute preparations one must make for a wedding. Joan had no idea that a Register Office ceremony followed by a diner in _The Perch_ garden would need such fussing. And of course, there are still the last necessary fixing-ups in Morse’s house.

Joan is so absorbed by this count-down that everything else takes an outlandish reality: the curators’ investigation progress of the millionaire’s vault, the welcome news that her Mini will be replaced by Incledon’s insurance, the arrest of the millionaire’s confederate—the so helpful bloke who so promptly chloroformed her and followed her up most of the time, looking for a favourable occasion to kidnap her—, the last updates from the extradition process. Incledon managed to scamper home, but both British and Austrian Governments put their feet down, so to speak, and are now politely disputing the honour of judging the fugitive first.

Some images cling to her consciousness, though.

Endeavour, the corners of his mouth quirking up, saying ruefully as he gives her a package, ‘Thought you might prefer them,’ and her burst of amusement when she tears open the wrapping paper to discover pop records beneath: The Wildwoods, The Beatles, even The Rolling Stones’ latest album, form part of a random selection.

Endeavour jumping down a stepladder, leaving Joan with her arm raised in the air, her hand clutching the book of Donne poetry she was holding forth. The organising of his library will wait for a bit, it seems, as he seizes the volume and puts it carelessly on the top step, takes both her hands in his, and pulls her swiftly into his arms. She goes unresistingly, raising her parted lips. He only has to take possession of them, while Joan’s palms flatten lightly against his chest; and then, suddenly, her arms are all round him, holding him tightly, and her body is pressed harder against his, clinging to him as if she wanted to wrap herself against him like a pliant vine. She remembers vaguely whispering something, but he silences her with fevered kisses, and afterwards, she can’t remember anything other than their mutual blissful amazement after their interlude, and their careful avoidance of any wild reiteration before they are wed.

The wedding day is also a blur.

Thankfully, Uncle Charlie and Co couldn’t make it—one embarrassment less; time enough for Morse to bask in his earthly wisdom—, and even Carol reneged on her promise to be Joan’s witness, with an embarrassed explanation that doesn’t bear looking into.

Therefore, only Dorothea Frazil, Jim Strange and Tony Donn bear witness that a slightly blushing Miss Thursday and a quite smug Mr. Morse exchanged their vows before a benevolent registrar, a tearful Win Thursday, a gruff Fred Thursday, and a jubilant Joy Morse. Sam couldn’t make it, but sent a letter that brought a flush to Joan’ cheeks and a huff of a laugh to Morse’s lips.

Repeating in snatches after the registrar, ‘ _I call upon_ —’ and at that moment, the witnesses’ answering smiles are dizzying, ‘— _to witness that I, Joan Winifred Thursday, do take you Endeavour Morse, to be my lawful wedded husband_ ,’ is the trickiest sentence to issue from her lips. She fears that happiness will make her stutter, or falter, or anything ludicrous, yet the words glide smoothly into the ether, as if they were preordained during all her life—or past lives, if Mrs. Mara’s ludicrous beliefs can be called forth. Along with all the certainly and promises inherent in these words, she finds herself mysteriously transmuted into Mrs. Joan Morse. 

And Morse’s vows as they exchange their wedding bands ring out the same as hers. Mellifluously steady, no outward show being necessary to assure her—and all their witnesses—that he means every word and will do his utmost to live by them. Quietly binding him, for better and for worse, ‘ _to be loving, faithful and loyal to you in living our married life together_.’

The diner is lovely, the guests merry. Antony Donn—‘ _Call me Tony, old Pagan wouldn’t stand for anything else!_ ’—doesn’t give any indication that he has memorized Morse’s Christian name, and neither has Dee but for the flash of mirth in her eyes when she overhears Endeavour’s old nickname. The conversations roll back and forth with laughter and wit, teasing and good wishes. The champagne is bubbly, the cake creamy, and Joan feels beautiful in her simple, elegant white dress which accentuates her waist with flowing lines. A dress that she feels sure that Morse eyes with only one design in mind, to take it off her, if she decodes some of his sidelong looks accurately. As for the groom, his smile threatens to tear his face in two, and he’s the most handsome man present. But Joan is probably prejudiced.

And then, they’re off, amongst congratulations, smiles and a few happy tears, Win wiping the corner of her eyes, while her Dad—uncharacteristically for him—puts his arm around his wife’s shoulder in public.

  


* * *

  


Previous to their marriage, the days might be a blur, but their nights after it are something else entirely. There isn’t a second that Joan doesn’t relish and treasure. If Morse usually looks down his nose at ignoramuses, in this instance, he proves a patient tutor, and she, a keen pupil.

‘I don't think I'll ever get quite used to this,’ Joan breathes, staring pointedly at the green and yellow brocade folds falling from the canopied bed.

Her head rolls down from the pillow and comes to rest on the bolster. Raised on his elbow, Endeavour searches her face, then frowns mischievously. ‘I’m not sure you’re paying proper attention.’

Her answering smile is blazing, reaching her irises. ‘Oh, I’m attentive!’

‘Not enough.’

And with that, he increases his endeavours to drive her out of her mind. And he succeeds.

But there are other times when they merely bask in each other’s presence, silence a common goal and not a divider; content to merely exist, knowing that the other is here, breathing in the same tempo.

The countryside, seaside and everything might be beautiful, but Joan will have to fib when her mother asks her innocently, on their return, how she found them. If she were entirely honest, she’d say that they didn’t much leave their bedchamber, and that most of their outings were towards the larder or the park, picnic basket and blanket in hand, for an afternoon of laziness in the sun.

Their Brighton retreat isn’t a ‘cottage,’ actually, and Joan now understands Tony’s glee when she asked him about it. Their honeymoon private resort is an eighteenth-century small mansion, one-storeyed, with lovely outbuildings and a smallish, well-groomed park. Tastefully adorned with so cleverly arranged, cared-for pieces of furniture, family pictures and gorgeous antiques that Joan marvels again at Incledon’s loud bad taste. He had the upper hand in money spending, that’s undeniable, but he couldn’t understand that taste cannot be acquired, but cultivated and sometimes inherited.

There were also gorgeous bouquets awaiting them, and a note from Tony telling them to avail themselves of whatever they needed, notifying them that the caretaker would come on Mondays to replenish the food and do some housekeeping, and advise them ‘to have fun.’

And have fun, they do.

  


* * *

  


Joan’s leg stretches slowly. With her toe, she brushes a large extent of the fine cotton sheets until flesh and bones stop her hazardous meandering. Further exploration up the discovered limb discloses that it is indeed a calf. Muffled by a pillow, a soft chuckle welcomes the daring journey of her foot.

With a contented sigh, Joan turns around and puts out an arm, her fingers stretching out further than the end of her reach.

‘Ouch!’ her brand-new husband exclaims with feeling.

‘Oops, sorry,’ Joan giggles without an ounce of repentance. ‘Your nose?’

‘Just missed my eye.’

‘Thought you were asleep… I wondered where you were.’

Endeavour laughs again and murmurs, ‘Near you, “ _full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing_ ”.’

Morse usually sleeps on his stomach, head half-buried in the pillow, the galaxy of freckles spread out on his naked shoulders and back, a fascinating realm to explore—thus explaining her mistake. This, and other delightful idiosyncrasies, are the field of an exquisite mental list that Joan now compiles in her daydreaming hours. It was Endeavour’s hair she was trying to caress, the soft curls her fingers never tire to touch.

As if to confirm that he is fully awake, Endeavour turns around and wraps an arm around her waist, drawing her closer to him. Joan rolls around with his move, and snuggles seductively against his chest. Her hands slide up his body, savouring the feel of smooth flesh and angular bones.

‘Mmm… Much better,’ she whispers into his skin. ‘I need a map and a sextant to find you in this monstrosity of a bed. It’s as large as a football field.’

Endeavour snorts. ‘It’s an antiquity of great value, according to Tony. Prinny once slept in it, hence it being called the Royal Bed by the family.’

‘If the Prince Regent did, then let’s bow to its historical value. It’s truly… princely! All the Boys from Up the Hill could sleep in it all together!’

‘Much too crowded for my taste! My wife suffices.’ His huff of laughter makes his chest rumble against her cheek, and she threads her fingers through the mahogany hair she was so eager to touch a few minutes ago. ‘But the bed has its—advantages…’

He flips her over playfully, his lips trailing over her breastbone, tracing her nooks and crannies unhurriedly. She purrs in answer, her hands slowly tracing his nape until they come to rest on his shoulders. ‘Awfully sinful, isn’t it? I could really get used to this Royal Bed… but for its third occupant.’

At this reminder, Endeavour raises his head and groans. ‘Don’t tell me it came back?’

‘Endeavour, don’t stop…’

‘Answer me, please. Did it?’

‘It came back,’ Joan says with finality. ‘Found it sleeping on my feet in the wee hours. It was really, _really_ pissed off when I moved.’ Instinctively, she shifts her ankle, and Endeavour understands at once the unspoken meaning. ‘Bit you?’

‘Scratched me, but not deeply,’ she confirms. ‘I had to apologize for disturbing it.’

‘That animal is a real menace,’ Morse declares with such conviction that Joan dissolves in giggles that she hides against his shoulder, dispelling the last of her amorous mood.

‘Scratched you, too?’ she asks between them.

‘No. Bit me when I locked it out of our bedroom last night. You were already asleep. How did it come back?’

Her answering laugh isn’t muffled this time. ‘My poor love! First, you were under the “Curse of the Pharaoh,” followed by the “Curse of the Undead Mozart”,’ she enumerates, capitalizing all the words, ‘then you got the “Curse of the Ghost Cat” on your honeymoon.’

‘Our honeymoon,’ Endeavour corrects while showing at first a renewed interest of proving the fact to his wife. Yet, instead of going on, he checks his hands, and puzzles, ‘Ghost Cat?’

‘Probably the Ghost of a Cat which scratched the Prince! It seems to believe the bed is its own! Every old house has its ghost, doesn’t it?’

‘In that case, pray it doesn’t take a liking to you,’ Endeavour teases. ‘I would hate to see it following us home.’

The silence answering him gives him pause. ‘Joan, you didn’t?’

Her voice is carefully neutral. ‘This cat? Oh, no. But the red tabby back home… Endeavour, it seemed awfully starved, so I—’

‘You gave it food,’ he says, with a resignation which astounds him.

‘Err… not really. A little milk, a bit of tuna fish, now and then, in late afternoon.’

That explains the row of dead mice he kept finding in the front garden path when he came home. Offerings to the human goddess, probably.

He’s doomed, Morse contemplates, knowing the ugly face of Defeat when he meets her. _The bloody cat will stay_.

Mistaking his silence for hesitation, Joan raises herself on one elbow, and says persuasively, ‘Don’t worry, darling. I’m sure it’ll like you!’ before Endeavour presses her back onto the mattress, and is so persuasive that her mind empties from everything and everyone who isn’t him.

**The End ( _for now!_ ) **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **‘ _Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing_ ’** is a quote from Keats’ _[Endymion](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44469/endymion-56d2239287ca5)_.  
>   
> All my thanks to Dorothy Clarkson who pointed out the differences between a Registry Office and a Register Office, in a comment posted on Fanfiction.net! Typo duly corrected now.  
>   
> I wrote the second part of the Epilogue before **Ghostiekitty** posted the first chapter of _[Unfinished Business](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21914197)_ (if you haven’t read it yet, do so! It’s awesome), thus ghosts following Morse home were still in the distant future. Go figure!  
>   
> I began writing this fic on 17 December 2019, so any resemblance to Series 7 of _Endeavour_ is purely coincidental. Watching Morse scrapping old wallpaper felt weird, as I kept expecting Joan to come in and give him a hand!  
>   
> The seminal scenes in the fic were: (a) a male OC falling dead at Joan’s feet in Morse’s house, and (b) the ‘ _Venite, inginocchiatevi_ …’ scene, which made me use Mozart’s music as a centrepiece for the mystery. The Epilogue was a given from the start, and it was one of the first scenes I wrote last December, so, again, the similarity with the Morse/Violetta pillow talk scenes is coincidental.  
>   
> Oh, and I almost forgot! Actors and opera singers active in England in the late eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century inspired the names of various OCs.  
>   
>  **Thank you so very much for sticking with me and for reading this to the conclusion!** As ever, the Very Grateful Author enthusiastically welcomes additional questions, kudos, comments, &c. **Your feedback was a great motivation for continuing this series, and I will try to do so, if my Muse agrees.**  
>   
>  I can’t end these notes without mentioning again the talented **[AstridContraMundum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstridContraMundum/pseuds/AstridContraMundum)** who gave me such a great motivation for writing chapters after chapters when I serialised the first draft for her on tumblr messaging. Without her generosity, encouragements, and comments, this fic would not exist. Without her Beta-ing, it wouldn’t be online. So, if you enjoyed the story, you also owe her no small measure of gratitude, as I do.  
>   
> 


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